The personhood status of the Whanganui River

In March 2017, the Tutohu Whakatupua Treaty Agreement passed into law, declaring the Whanganui River and its tributaries “an indivisible and living whole”. The river has been declared a “legal person” under the name Te Awa Tupua, in recognition of the Māori worldview “Ko au te Awa, ko te Awa ko au” (“I am the River and the River is me”). 

The Māori people of the river, the Whanganui Iwi, have an ancestral connection with the river, existing long before the colonisation of New Zealand. The Whanganui River settlement is part of a 150-year-long history of discussions, claims, and negotiations between the Māori and the Crown government to recognise mountains, national parks and watersheds as living ancestors to whom humans bear the responsibility of care. This meant the Crown had to relinquish property ownership over the river, allowing 180 miles of river to own itself, rather than be owned, reflecting the way Māori cosmology understands rivers as living entities with their own mauri (life force). 

Under common law, legal status has been granted to corporations, as well as to other non-human entities including trusts, joint ventures and nation-states. With its grounding in Māori law, the case of the Whanganui River extends legal personhood rights to the natural world. As The Waitangi Tribunal (set up in 1999 to document the history of action) noted in the Whanganui River report “Land ownership is not a universal law but a particular construct of some cultures”. In Māori culture, the idea that land can be owned and traded is irreconcilable with an ancestor-dependent relationship. The Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017 included official apologies from the Crown for historic crimes against the river and the Māori people. 

Granting the Whanganui River the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of the legal person has led to different forms of governance. At the legal level, a two-person governing body (a representative of the Whanganui River iwi and the crown) acts as the human face of the river, with responsibilities to centre the needs of the river in decisions about its use. At the local level, new governance systems that integrate indigenous values, new practices, and devolution of authority are forming around initiatives. For example, the Whanganui port revitalisation project has a collective hub of local sub-tribes overseeing the application of the Act acting in constellation with private companies and public entities at governance and operational levels. All employees, contractors and staff involved in the project take part in inductions in the values underpinning the essence of the Act, while open meetings, hearings on plans and site visits involve the community, representing a paradigm shift towards more reciprocal forms of governance.