A mountain in New Zealand is now officially recognised as a human

Mount Taranaki, Egmont National Park, North Island, New Zealand

 

New Zealand's loneliest mountain

 

According to the legends of New Zealand's Indigenous Māori people, the lonely Mount Taranaki wasn't always lonely. Taranaki, the story goes, once lived among other mountains in the North Island's center. But Taranaki feuded with the powerful volcano Tongariro over the love of the pretty peak Pīhanga. In their epic battle, the now flat-topped Tongariro lost his head but emerged victorious. The vanquished Taranaki wandered west, cutting trenches as he trudged to the shore and filling them with lovesick tears to create the region's rivers.

 

Now that Taranaki's settled in, the still-active stratovolcano's slopes and foothills comprise one of New Zealand's oldest national parks. Whether or not he's gotten over Pīhanga after untold millennia, Taranaki continues to compete with Tongariro even through modern myth: Taranaki had a star turn as Mount Fuji in background shots for 'The Last Samurai,' while the Tongariro area stood in for the cursed realm of Mordor in the 'Lord of the Rings' films.

 

 

Mount Taranaki

Taranaki Maunga

Mount Egmont

Mount Taranaki (Māori: Taranaki Maunga, also known as Mount Egmont) is a dormant stratovolcano 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.

 

 Mount Egmont , Taranaki, New Zealand. 

Mount Taranaki: the kiwi Fuji!

 

A mountain in New Zealand is now officially recognised as a human

The Independent

Story by Charlotte Graham-McLay

30/01/2025

뉴질랜드의 한 산이 이제 공식적으로 인간으로 인정되었습니다.

샬롯 그레이엄-맥레이(Charlotte Graham-McLay)의 이야기

 

A mountain in New Zealand is now officially recognised as a human.

Considered an ancestor by Indigenous people, the mountain was recognised 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 considered an ancestor by Indigenous people.

뉴질랜드의 한 산은 이제 공식적으로 인간으로 인정되었습니다.

원주민들에 의해 조상으로 여겨지는 이 산은 새로운 법이 인간의 모든 권리와 책임을 부여한 후 목요일에 법적 인물로 인정되었습니다.

현재 타라나키 마웅가(Taranaki Maunga)로 알려진 타라나키 산(Mount Taranaki)은 마오리 이름으로, 원주민들의 조상으로 여겨진다.

 

The 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.

 

It was recognised as a legal person on Thursday after a new law granted it all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.

 

It 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 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.

 

The law passed on 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.”

눈 덮인 휴화산은 2,518미터(8,261피트)로 뉴질랜드 북섬에서 두 번째로 높으며 관광, 하이킹 및 스노우 스포츠로 인기 있는 장소입니다.

그것은 새로운 법이 인간의 모든 권리와 책임을 부여한 후 목요일에 법인으로 인정되었습니다.

그것은 강과 길게 뻗은 신성한 땅이 이전에 사람이라고 통치했던 뉴질랜드에서 인격체가 부여된 가장 최근의 자연적 특징입니다.

이 법적 인정은 뉴질랜드가 식민지가 된 후 타라나키 지역의 마오리족이 이 산을 훔쳐갔다는 것을 인정하는 것이다. 그것은 그 이후로 땅에 가해진 해악에 대해 국가 정부가 원주민에게 배상하기로 한 계약을 이행합니다.

목요일에 통과된 법은 타라나키 마웅가에게 개인의 모든 권리, 권한, 의무, 책임 및 의무를 부여한다. 그 법적 성격은 테 카후이 투푸아(Te Kāhui Tupua)라는 이름을 가지고 있으며, 법은 그것을 "살아 있고 나눌 수 없는 전체"로 간주합니다. 여기에는 타라나키와 그 주변의 봉우리와 땅이 포함되며 "모든 물리적, 형이상학적 요소를 통합"합니다.

 

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.

A man takes a picture of his wife with Mount Taranaki, also known as Mount Egmont, in the background in New Plymouth, New Zealand, Sept. 26, 2011 (AP2011)

 

“The mountain has long been an honored ancestor, a source of physical, cultural and spiritual sustenance and a final resting place," Paul Goldsmith, the lawmaker responsible for the settlements between the government and Māori tribes, told Parliament in a speech on Thursday.

 

But colonizers of New Zealand in the 18th and 19th centuries took first the name of Taranaki and then the mountain itself. In 1770, the British explorer Captain James Cook spotted the peak from his ship and named it Mount Egmont.

 

Mount Taranaki — now known as Taranaki Maunga:

 

타라나키 산(Mount Taranaki) — 현재 타라나키 마웅가(Taranaki Maunga)로 알려져 있습니다.

 

In 1840, Māori tribes and representatives of the British crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi — New Zealand's founding document — in which the Crown promised Māori would retain rights to their land and resources. But the Māori and English versions of the treaty differed — and Crown breaches of both began immediately.

In 1865, a vast swathe of Taranaki land, including the mountain, was confiscated to punish Māori for rebeling against the Crown. Over the next century hunting and sports groups had a say in the mountain's management — but Māori did not.

 

“Traditional Māori practices associated with the mountain were banned while tourism was promoted,” Goldsmith said. But a Māori protest movement of the 1970s and '80s has led to a surge of recognition for the Māori language, culture and rights in New Zealand law.

 

Redress has included billions of dollars in Treaty of Waitangi settlements — such as the agreement with the eight tribes of Taranaki, signed in 2023.

 

How will the mountain use its rights?

산은 그 권리를 어떻게 행사할 것인가?

 

“Today, Taranaki, our maunga, our maunga tupuna, is released from the shackles, the shackles of injustice, of ignorance, of hate," said Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, a co-leader of the political party Te Pāti Māori and a descendant of the Taranaki tribes, using a phrase that means ancestral mountain.

 

“We grew up knowing there was nothing anyone could do to make us any less connected,” she added.

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.

Clouds are reflected in the Whanganui River at the town of Whanganui, New Zealand, (AP ﾂｩ Brett Phibbs, PhibbsVisuals Limited)

 

New Zealand was the first country in the world to recognise natural features as people when a law passed in 2014 granted personhood to Te Urewera, a vast native forest on the North Island. Government ownership ceased and the tribe Tūhoe became its guardian.

 

“Te Urewera is ancient and enduring, a fortress of nature, alive with history; its scenery is abundant with mystery, adventure, and remote beauty,” the law begins, before describing its spiritual significance to Māori. In 2017, New Zealand recognised the Whanganui River as human, as part of a settlement with its local iwi.

The bill recognizing the mountain's personhood was affirmed unanimously by Parliament's 123 lawmakers. The vote was greeted by a ringing waiata — a Māori song — from the public gallery, packed with dozens who had traveled to the capital, Wellington, from Taranaki.

 

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.

 

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