Climate Change
‘I Am the River’: How Indigenous Knowledge Reshaped New Zealand’s Law
The Whanganui River is officially a living being and legal person. Māori leaders explain how Indigenous knowledge and persistence made it happen.
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.
‘I Am the River’: How Indigenous Knowledge Reshaped New Zealand’s Law