New Zealand is the first country in the world to give natural geographic features the status of personhood, with all the rights of a human being. It was first done to Te Urewera, a remote area of the North Island, then to the North Island’s Whanganui River. Now CNN and Breaking Views (headlines below) report that personhood has been tranted to a third feature, the volcano Mount Taranaki, also on the North Island, and located here:
A bit about it from Wikipedia:
Taranaki Maunga, also known as Mount Egmont) is a dormant stratovolcano and legal person in the Taranaki region on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. At 2,518 metres (8,261 ft), it is the second highest mountain in the North Island, after Mount Ruapehu. It has a secondary cone, Fanthams Peak (Māori: Panitahi), 1,966 metres (6,450 ft), on its south side.
It’s a lovely mountain, and yet I didn’t see it when I visited the country a few years ago. Here are two photos from Wikipedia:
The caption for this one is: “Mount Taranaki (Mt Egmont), from Inglewood, New Zealand, 1896”
Click on the headlines below to read. The first article is from CNN, the second from Breaking Views. Quotes will be from CNN unless indicated otherwise.
Although the mountain was apparently sacred to the indigenous Māori people (it was considered an “ancestor”), it was renamed and claimed by Europeans who colonized the country. When the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840, ceding all Māori lands to their respective tribes (the treaty wasn’t signed by all indigenous tribes and has been subject to conflicting interpretations for nearly two centuries), the Māori could reasonably claim that the mountain had been stolen from them. On January 30, the New Zealand government redressed this appropriation by giving the mountain the same status as a human being. From CNN:
A mountain in New Zealand considered an ancestor by Indigenous people was recognized as a legal person on Thursday after a new law granted it all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.
Mount Taranaki — now known as Taranaki Maunga, its Māori name — is the latest natural feature to be granted personhood in New Zealand, which has ruled that a river and a stretch of sacred land are people before. The pristine, snow-capped dormant volcano is the second highest on New Zealand’s North Island at 2,518 meters (8,261 feet) and a popular spot for tourism, hiking and snow sports.
The legal recognition acknowledges the mountain’s theft from the Māori of the Taranaki region after New Zealand was colonized. It fulfills an agreement of redress from the country’s government to Indigenous people for harms perpetrated against the land since.
How can a mountain be a person?
The law passed Thursday gives Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities and liabilities of a person. Its legal personality has a name: Te Kāhui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole.” It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements.”
A newly created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, the law says, with four members from local Māori iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the country’s Conservation Minister.
The vote on giving the mountain personhood was unanimous in Parliament: 123 to 0. It’s not completely clear to me what “personhood” means, except that the Māori get to be guardians of the mountain. Here’s a bit from CNN:
The mountain’s legal rights are intended to uphold its health and wellbeing. They will be employed to stop forced sales, restore its traditional uses and allow conservation work to protect the native wildlife that flourishes there. Public access will remain.
And from Breaking Views:
The legislation, passed by Labour in 2023, recognises Mount Taranaki, alongside its companion peaks, as a living ancestor with its own identity and rights.
. . . . The park surrounding Mount Taranaki will be renamed Te Papa-Kura o Taranaki, with management plans requiring dual approval from the conservation minister and iwi leaders.
Under the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill, an oversight committee (Te Tōpuni Kōkōrangi) of four iwi and four Crown representatives will govern and set cultural and spiritual values.
A conservation board, including three iwi representatives, will work with the Department of Conservation on daily management. All governance costs will be funded by the Crown. [The New Zealand government.]
There are a couple of issues here. As I said, I have no objection to giving the mountain special conservation status and letting the Māori have most of the governance, though this could create a slippery-slope situation in which every geographic feature could be considered special to the Māori before colonization.
But what is added by giving the mountain “personhood”? As far as I can see, nothing substantive save the recognition that the mountain is an “ancestor”. Yet that formalizes a supernatural belief, which should not be the case. Everything else, like damaging the mountain, building forbidden structures on it and the like, can come under the rubric of conservation.
But, as you can see by the unanimous vote, Kiwis of European-ancestry are in no mood to buck the tide of the sacralization of indigenous claims. Would we name the Grand Canyon as a “person” (“Mr. Canyon”?) if a Native America group regarded it as sacred? Mt. McKinley was renamed, Mt. Denali as that was the traditional name of the local indigenous people. I have no issue with that (Trump, of course, wants to remove the indigenous name), but if the mountain was seen to have spiritual or sacred properties (I doubt that it did, but can find no information), should we deem the mountain a person?
As far as I can see, considering geographic features “people” because they had supernatural and spiritual aspects is a violation of the First Amendment. Now New Zealand has no such provision (it doesn’t even have a constitution), so the government can do what it wants. And what it wants is to give the Māori exactly what they demand.
And all of this is happening at a fraught time in New Zealand’s politics. What is happening is that there is a government bill to codify the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi so they can become clear law, instead of the nebulous provisions (there are different translations and different interpretations) that people cite to justify what they want. (A common theme you’ll see here is the Māori reliance on the treaty to demand equal rights to teach their “ways of knowing” in schools, a demand that cannot possibly be derived from the three provisions of the Treaty.) In other words, the bill would create a sort of New Zealand constitution based on the Treaty.
But the bill is not going to pass. As CNN says:
The unity provided brief respite in a tense period for race relations in New Zealand. In November, tens of thousands of people marched to Parliament to protest a law that would reshape the Treaty of Waitangi by setting rigid legal definitions for each clause. Detractors say the law — which is not expected to pass — would strip Māori of legal rights and dramatically reverse progress from the past five decades.
The “progress” to which they refer is largely the increasing hegemony of Māori rights and privileges over the past five decades, to the point that, though they constitute only 18% of the inhabitants, they claim at least half of the rights: a huge form of affirmative action. Now it’s clear that Māori were mistreated and subject to bigotry in the past, but what we see happening in New Zealand now is not just an attempt to create equal opportunities for all, or even equity for all groups (to me the former is okay while the latter is not). The goal is larger than equity: to try to create a Super Equity in which indigenous people get at least half of everything, including half the time in science class.
That would be a debacle, but it’s happening, and it will happen far beyond the schools. The result will be the erosion of merit in favor of identity—exactly what has happened in the U.S.
New Zealand really does need a bill like this, but it needs a Constitution even more. Neither will come to pass.
Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t add that in the U.S., corporations have been granted certain privileges and responsibilities of “personhood”, including the right to be sued and to be subject to civil or criminal charges. I have no dog in that fight, but there’s nothing spiritual or sacred about it.
h/t: Christopher
So, if it erupts and kills people, are they going to put it on trial?
I was wondering.
Maybe the Europeans angered the mountain.
That was my first thought: if it erupted could the citizens of Inglewood, NZ, sue for damages?
Sue whom? The mountain’s legally recognized heirs and descendants? Hope they have insurance.
Did it proclaim its pronouns?
Indeed; I was wondering what gender it was, and whether it could change gender if it wanted.
Still, it’s got four Government-appointed guardians, and four more from local tribes. A nice little sinecure for some people. I expect they could decide if it should change gender.
Since it’s in New Zealand I’m sure that it can use whatever bathroom it feels most comfortable with, bigot! 😂 It might well blow its top if it’s challenged in there, though.
It’s male. It lost the fight for pretty little Pihanga (a smaller female mountain), lost her to a bigger volcano. So Taranki stomped off, away from the volcanic plateau, to the coast to be alone after that.
Sturm/Drang
Maybe more like Sturm / Teacup ?
Well, hey – New Hampshire had an Old Man of the Mountain – before he crumbled away, anyway – why not New Zealand?
A hood that big though will need lots of yarn.
I think that giving corporations the rights of people is far more dangerous than granting personhod to a mountain. The former has poisoned our political system, whereas mountains are not going to influence elections through unrestrained spending,
I didn’t say that what happened in NZ was more “dangerous” that the U.S. policy.
I didn’t say you did, and I don’t think my comment implies that either.
Corporations don’t so much have the rights of persons as they have the obligations of persons: to pay taxes and face lawsuits, as Jerry alluded to. All that deeming a corporation a person does is bring it under the reach of the panoply of laws that begin, “Every person who does X commits an offence…”
A limited liability corporation does just what it says on the tin. It limits the liability of investors in bankruptcy to what they invested, and shares out the profits according to the same. No one would invest in a business venture that he didn’t have direct control over if he was going to be personally liable for everything he owned as with a sole proprietorship. From the corporation’s point of view there is no need for it to consider itself a person. To the shareholders it’s just the XYZ Corporation. Personhood is imposed by government to make sure that this legal social construct doesn’t think it’s going to get out of paying taxes or being liable for torts or employment standards or limits on political contributions that a natural human person would have to obey.
Governments can always distinguish between corporations and natural persons whenever they want, with language such as, “If the taxpayer [person] is a corporation, …”. And of course where only natural persons can be relevant, such as being a victim of homicide, the law refers to human beings. But corporations, like natural persons, can be victims of theft, and they can be found guilty of committing it. Why shouldn’t they be?
I do find it mystifying that anyone thinks considering a corporation to be a legal person is harmful in any way. If they weren’t persons they’d be outside the law.
I do not think that is true. People could sue corporations a LONG time before they were declared persons. What I am not sure about is bringing criminal charges against a corporation; maybe they would have to be persoss for that.
My attorney wife suggests that I add a small note of clarification to this. To wit, corporations have been “legal persons” for hundreds of years, long before there was a U.S. or a U.S. Constitution. It is a well-established concept in law.
Legal persons are distinguished in law from “natural persons.” The issue that the U.S. Supreme Court took up in the Citizens United case was the extent to which corporations as legal persons have the same rights as natural persons, and the extent to which they don’t.
And an additional bit of clarification: you can sue a corporation precisely because it is a legal person. You do not have to sue each member of the corporation individually. Just as you may enter into an agreement with a corporation without having to enter into that agreement with every stock holder individually.
What is seen as the main problem with the ruling is that corporations can make unlimited political donations. So with their deep pockets, they can have extreme influence.
Ah. Now I think I see where we may be talking about different things. In the Citizens United case, the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling reversed an earlier holding that corporations were restricted in the amount and extent of campaign contributions they could make but “natural persons” were not. (There was a clear understanding that corporations were not the same as natural persons; that was the very basis of the status quo. That they were “persons” was never at issue, as David Taylor reminds us. They always have been.) The majority found that political speech, including raising money to pay for it, was protected under the First Amendment whether the “speaker” was an individual natural person or a corporation, and so drawing distinction between them was unconstitutional. In this sense, I suppose, it does appear that corporations were given rights (to political speech) as if they were natural persons. But then what is a corporation but a group of natural persons (people) who come together for a common purpose with limited liability?
There seems to be a misapprehension, stoked maybe by the dissenting opinion, that the Citizens United ruling conferred “person” status on corporations for the first time. But this is clearly wrong.
(I don’t have an opinion on campaign financing per se.)
https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/citizens-united-v-fec/
There is a clickable link to a pdf of the text of the ruling.
We love to anthropomorphize everything. It’s why we use the term ‘mother nature’. It suits us humans.
Minor nitpick: since “Mt” is an English word and an English way of naming mountains, you’d either call it “Mt McKinley” or “Denali” but not “Mt Denali”.
(Though, of course, since Alaska is covered by the First Amendment, anyone is free to call it anything they like.)
Google still returns “Denali” when one asks what is the highest mountain in the US.
However Google caved on “Gulf of America.” Mexico is not happy.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10986479/gulf-of-mexico-renaming-mexican-president-letter-google/amp/
Will it have to pay taxes?
You’d think so, if there’s property tax in NZ.
I would recommend anyone watching the film “The Corporation” which is available on youtube, based on the book by Joel Bakan “The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power”
+1
I particularly like the psychological analysis.
That’s a great film. I’m surprised it never became better known.
Some clever smuck is going to claim the pension on Mrs Taranaki’s behalf, get it backdated and a gold card for free public transport.
… one thing, Taranaki’s claim to be a mountain will never be disputed (looks like one, quacks like one) and as a person? I’ve met worse.
Brilliant!
But what if it identifies as a lake?
Which, I suppose, it might do one day if it leaves a caldera after a big eruption!
An insult to our species. Then if I die in a rockfall on it I’d expect the mountain or those responsible for it to be charged with murder.
I’d like to offer to perform a marriage, now that mountains can have right’s of people, between Taranaki Maunga and my local girl, Mount St. Helens. She’s petite but very active.
LOL! 😺
Sounds like the Pixar short Lava: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ePwaMmfppOM
Before the wedding, St. Helens might need a bit of plastic surgery to repair some of the damage from her head explosion. Wedding pictures, don’tcha know.
Now that Mount Taranaki has become a legal person I understand it has applied for a jobseeker benefit. It is seeking work as a volcano.
It a meaningless designation in terms of concrete effects. But I larger point I think is the question about why one group of humans gets to own a public landscape. I would argue spectacular wonders of the world “belong” to everyone. Or maybe we should say nobody deserves to “own” them. I argue though that cultural and natural heritage belongs to all of us because we are all humans.
New Zealand already has a river which was designated as a person: the Whanganui River was declared a person in 2017. Random link from the internet: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200319-the-new-zealand-river-that-became-a-legal-person
Likewise the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India have similar rights, as do rivers in Ecuador.
This isn’t just ancestor worship or anything like that. It’s more like saying, This piece of nature is special and we don’t want yahoos with bulldozers ripping it up. I’m all in favour of this sort of thing.
This story says the Maori did regard the river as their literal ancestor. Damaging it would constitute a legal human injury to the tribe of humans.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/16/new-zealand-river-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-being
As Jerry implies with his slippery-slope reference, the danger with both of these inanimate objects being declared not just persons but specifically Maori persons is that the Maori minority will claim disproportionate authority — dare I say a veto? — over what constitutes damage. Will the elected NZ government have a say if it has a legitimate public purpose in mind for the river or the mountain? If a Maori family consortium descended from the river wants to build a lucrative toxic-waste dump beside it (as Canada’s indigenous people do on their Reserves), can the New Zealand environmental regulatory authorities over-rule them (if it dares) or does the Maori consortium have the final say over what use they, or anyone else, make of their ancestor?
I guess this is up to New Zealand.
Paul Clapham — doesn’t a National Park designation achieve precisely that without any of the dangerously precedent-setting woo?
I’m not sure about that. It’s possible that things may be done in a National Park which should not be done in a Maori sacred location. I think that’s why India didn’t just make the Ganges River a national park, because it’s sacred to a good many people in India.
I suspect that a good many people who follow this forum are like me and don’t feel that any location is sacred to them. However there are people who do have sacred sites and are willing to defend them strongly, and I don’t like to tell those people that their views are bunk or that they are just using the idea of “sacred” to build a waste dump. After all I have positive feelings about mountains which haven’t been affected by humans, like Taranaki, but I don’t use the word “sacred” to describe those feelings.
I think Ecuador beat New Zealand to it, with the Vilcabamba River successfully representing itself before the Provincial Court of Justice of Loja in 2011:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_personhood#Ecuador
Yes, nature in Ecuador has given nature constitutional rights of a person. This has made a huge difference in our fights against illegal mining etc. The declaration that nature has rights has made a substantive difference. Here there was no anti colonialism or wokeness involved.
The belief that volcanos or mountains are living entities with “metaphysical elements” is animistic baloney.
By the way, The Oxford Dictionary of Law defines “legal person” as “a natural person (i.e. a human being) or a juristic person,” and it defines the latter aka “artificial person” as “an entity, such as a corporation, that is recognized as having legal personality, i.e. it is capable of enjoying and being subject to legal rights and duties.”
I almost always agree with you, Jerry, but part company with you on this matter. Personhood is a legal status in a similar way to incorporation. Both invent a “body” for legal purposes – one that enjoys many of the rights and privileges of an individual human. Nowhere is the mountain being sacralised, and of course any individual is free to do that if they wish. Neither does the legal status equal personhood in the everyday sense of that word. Personhood also recognises the unique relationship Māori have with the mountain, which is a fine thing in my view. Granting personhood to the mountain costs me nothing as opposed to efforts to equate MM with science, which cost me a lot.
I take your point, Ken, but in this context, given what we know of the larger context of indigenous activism, what are the chances that the Maori trustees will not sacralize the mountain, and do so as leverage to get their way (whatever that may be)?
Person deemed to have status of volcano after blowing his lid for the umpteenth time.
This is the third instance of a natural feature being declared a legal person here, so I’m getting immune to this sort of thing and didn’t pay the current one much attention.
The act itself is here, and it is worth looking at the explanatory note to see the rationale:
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2023/0293/6.0/d17231378e2.html
The act refers to the official name of the mountain now being “Taranaki Maunga”, and I was struck by the Guardian article here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/30/taranaki-mounga-new-zealands-second-highest-mountain-granted-same-legal-rights-as-a-person
which uses the spelling “Taranaki Mounga” throughout. An explanatory note says ‘Mounga is the regional spelling for the more widely used “maunga”’. The concept of “regional spelling”, especially for a language that was not written until the Europeans arrived, strikes me as eccentric.
What they might mean is that a spelling of mounga more closely reflects the local dialect pronunciation of maunga. There is history for this, i.e. Taranaki dialect pronunciations being overlaid by what’s become modern Standard Maori. Winifred Bauer discusses it in relation to the debate over the spelling of <w(h)anganui>, http://www.nzlii.org/nz/journals/VUWLawRw/2011/11.html
(Of course, mounga also more closely represents the prescribed pronunciation of maunga when it is borrowed into English today. So the Guardian may itself be a bit confused. The facts are sociolinguistically complicated.)
Whatever the reason, I can’t see that regional variation in spelling is a good thing. It would certainly cause chaos in my home country of England if widely adopted. I also noticed a while back that some iwi, especially from the Waikato, prefer to use a doubled vowel in place of a macron – for example the Waikato District Council predominantly uses “Maaori” rather than “Māori” nowadays.
I found the article by Winifred Bauer fascinating, if niche. Nobody from the town formerly known as Wanganui, AFAICT, pronounces “wh” as “f” (https://youtu.be/E8DAqCScpyE), but since they changed the spelling TVNZ presenters have clearly been instructed to pronounce it that way.
Since you’re interested: Bruce Biggs (198) did record some regional alternations between /au/ and /ou/. The latter used in the West, the former in the East. So /ou/ in mounga could be a historical feature of Taranaki. It seems more plausible to me that it is the present-day, pan-Maori pronunciation of /au/ in a way that maximally distinguishes it from English /au/.
On the question of whether different spellings will cause chaos: unlikely. The variation in Maori is pretty restricted. “The divergent pronunciations and
usages never impede mutual intelligibility, but are to quite an extent exploited as shibboleths, identifying speakers’ regional and tribal origins.” (Harlow, R. (2007). Maori : A linguistic introduction. Cambridge University Press, p44)