Jeremy Lurgio - New Zealand's Whanganui river is the first in the world to be recognised as an indivisible and living being
Adam Daniel wades
waist deep through the glassy water. Pumice stones spiral in the shallow eddy,
while the shrill whistles of a male whio (blue duck) echo upstream through the
green canyon walls. The mountain stream’s deep current slows around a lone tree
standing on a small rocky island before rushing toward the sea.
Like a doctor, Daniel
spends the morning checking the pulse of the river’s upper arteries, taking
temperature readings and drawing water samples to diagnose its vitality. Thirty
kilometres to his south-east, the Whanganui River’s pristine headwaters begin
in the internationally renowned Tongariro National Park, on the western flanks
of three cone volcanoes, Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngauruhoe. From there the river
carves through two national parks, a national forest, farmland, two large towns
and many smaller communities on its journey 260km to the south, where it empties
into the Tasman Sea.
But the body of water
flowing past Daniel is more than a geographical feature. Granted personhood in
2017 by an act of the New Zealand parliament,
the Whanganui is the first river in the world to be recognised as an
indivisible and living being. The Māori tribes that
live along the Whanganui have always seen the river as sacred – its waters have
nourished and blessed the people throughout the 700 years they have lived beside
it. The law set in motion new intentions to uphold the mana (prestige) and
mauri (life force) of the river....
