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‘I Am the River’: How Indigenous Knowledge Reshaped New Zealand’s Law

Inside Climate News · By Katie Surma · last updated
The Whanganui River is officially a living being and legal person. Māori leaders explain how Indigenous knowledge and persistence made it happen.

By Katie Surma

Ned Tapa has spent his life along New Zealand’s Whanganui River. For Tapa, a Māori leader, the river is not a resource to be managed or a commodity to be owned. It is an ancestor. A living being. A life force.