[News] New Zealand Maori Win 160-Year Campaign to Grant Sacred River Legal Rights

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Maori-Win-160-Year-Campaign-to-Grant-Sacred-River-Legal-Rights-20170316-0005.html 



  Maori Win 160-Year Campaign to Grant Sacred River Legal Rights

16 March 2017

On Wednesday, the New Zealand Parliament passed a new treaty law which 
recognizes that the Whanganui River has the same legal rights and 
protections as a person.

The Whanganui River Claims Settlement is the culmination of a 160-year 
campaign by the Whanganui iwi, a Maori nation on the north island, to 
have the river recognized as one of its sacred ancestors.

"The reason we have taken this approach is because we consider the river 
an ancestor and always have," said Gerrard Albert, the lead treaty 
negotiator for the Whanganui iwi.

"We have fought to find an approximation in law so that all others can 
understand that from our perspective treating the river as a living 
entity is the correct way to approach it, as in indivisible whole, 
instead of the traditional model for the last 100 years of treating it 
from a perspective of ownership and management."

The treaty requires that two guardians be appointed to act on behalf of 
the Whanganui river, one from the government and one from the Whanganui 
iwi.The guardians will ensure that if the river is harmed or abused in 
any way, as with a person, it can be defended in court.

Chris Finlayson, the minister responsible for the treaty negotiations, 
noted that while some might think it strange that a river could have 
legal rights equivalent to personhood, it’s no different than the legal 
recognition granted to corporations and other trusts.

Albert told reporters that he hopes the treaty — which includes an US$80 
million payment to the Whanganui iwi as and another US$1 million to 
create the legal identity of the river — will serve as a model for other 
Maori communities in the country.

"We can trace our genealogy to the origins of the universe," said 
Albert. "And therefore rather than us being masters of the natural 
world, we are part of it. We want to live like that as our starting 
point. And that is not an anti-development, or anti-economic use of the 
river but to begin with the view that it is a living being, and then 
consider its future from that central belief."

While many noted that this is the first time a specific river has been 
granted legal personhood, both Ecuador and Bolivia have been on the 
cutting edge of granting legal rights to nature.

In 2008, Ecuador made history by enshrining the Rights of Nature — to 
exist, persist, maintain and regenerate — in its constitution and in 
2011 Bolivia passed its own Law of Mother Earth, which granted legal 
personhood rights to all natural biosystems in the country.

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