Taranaki Mauna - Legal Personhood for a Mountain

    I lived in Tacoma, WA for three sunny summer months back in 2018 and that is where I first encountered the kind of relationship people can have with a mountain.  It was easy to anthropomorphize that individual shape looming on the horizon.  I never felt that way about the Appalachian range, small and unimposing as they were, a gentle ramp up in elevation and no snowy peaks.  When the mountain is singular, rising with grandeur there is something regal that forces us to take notice.  In Tacoma, the mountain was one way that people measured the day.  If we could see Tahoma (Mt. Rainier) in the distance and you asked someone "How are you?" their response would be an enthusiastic "The mountain's out!"  The shared meaning was clear: the weather was fine, the sky blue, and we were content.  The presence of the mountain was like a friendly neighbor, or a nurturing older relative.  The way that it filled the sky was reassuring.

    Taranaki Mauna is an important figure for the local Maori iwi (tribe) on the north island, it is considered an ancestor, the mountain is that nurturing older relative.  Taranaki Mauna was one of the earliest sites protected by the New Zealand government, since 1900 the bustling dairy farms nestling at the foot of the mountain have been restricted in their encroachment.  Look at aerial photography and it immediately reveals a beautiful halo of bush wilderness.  You can see where the clear-cutting has turned the local "goblin forest" into pastures, where the deep green of Egemont National Park abruptly becomes discrete pallid green parcels of farmland

Photo credit:  Axelspace Corp

Photo credit: Jon Sullivan

    Goblin forests are full of the kind of trees that have trees and at least five different types of moss and lichen growing on their trunks.  Truly, the trees are recursive, they have have forests growing on them.  This used to be what covered the entire region, before European-style agriculture came to dominate.  

    

    

   

This is not a first for granting a geographic feature in NZ, the first was the Te Urewera forested region in 2014, followed by the Whanganui Awa (river) in 2017.  The acts legislating these places refer to the sites as having "all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person."  I want to make a joke about the first person to sue a mountain for their slip and fall injury, but the truth is that personal injury suits don't really exist in this country (see ACC footnote).  

     Of note, these legal distinctions have been pressed for and passed because of the intimate and historic relationship Maori have with the land they live on.  The modern government is founded on a document called the Treaty of Waitangi, which involved a whole lot of different translations of a document (the English says the Maori "cede" their land, the re Reo Maori language version says they rule alongside the English government.  Unsurprisingly, there have been legal battles over this difference ever since.  Oh, and unsurprisingly, the current  government is trying to pare away those hard-won protections, claiming that we're all equal now and that Maori should get no "special treatment" under the government. But I'd rather not chew on the bitter stems of the current government, I'll go back to celebrating this little win.

Good luck in the modern world, Taranaki Mauna.

For more on Taranaki Mauna's new status see: New Zealand Mountain is Granted Personhood

****ACC note: The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) precludes the need for worker's comp and certain types of private liability insurance.  Slip on ice in a parking lot?  The government foots your physiotherapy bill.  Or surgery.  Or time off work.  This may explain the degree to which the general population is relaxed, whether they are plodding and earth-bound like me or are the adrenaline junkie type doing paragliding, surfing, extreme mountaineering, or Zorbing.  No person is just one accident away from the end of their life as they know it.  This feels like a good example of having bread and also roses, but the roses are a dangerous hobby jumping off of something.