12 - Indigenous Ancestors

Summary

On the world stage there is now a suite of laws that aspire to recognize Indigenous peoples’ cultural environmental management philosophies and practices. Of international acclaim, on July 27, 2014, Te Urewera, a large forested national park in the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, became simply: Te Urewera “a legal entity” with “all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person.”¹ Three years later, on March 20, 2017, Aotearoa New Zealand enacted legislation giving legal personality to the country’s third longest river, the Whanganui River.² In December 2017, it was announced that law will be enacted in the near future to recognize Mount Taranaki as a legal person “effectively giving the mountain the same protections as a citizen.”³ Legal personality of this land, river, and mountain mark a significant positive transformation for Aotearoa New Zealand’s environmental and constitutional laws. These laws provide a connective example of how western colonial law can positively forge a bridge to Indigenous laws. These resolutions are groundbreaking political solutions to constructively accept at a national level Māori Indigenous laws for knowing, caring for, and using lands and waters.