New Zealand Mountain Granted Personhood, Recognizing it as Sacred for Māori

FILE - New Zealand's Mount Taranaki, also known as Mount Egmont, has a warm glow lighting the snow peak, June 12, 2011. (AP Photo/David Frampton, File)
FILE - New Zealand's Mount Taranaki, also known as Mount Egmont, has a warm glow lighting the snow peak, June 12, 2011. (AP Photo/David Frampton, File)
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New Zealand Mountain Granted Personhood, Recognizing it as Sacred for Māori

FILE - New Zealand's Mount Taranaki, also known as Mount Egmont, has a warm glow lighting the snow peak, June 12, 2011. (AP Photo/David Frampton, File)
FILE - New Zealand's Mount Taranaki, also known as Mount Egmont, has a warm glow lighting the snow peak, June 12, 2011. (AP Photo/David Frampton, File)

A mountain in New Zealand considered an ancestor by Indigenous people was recognized as a legal person on Thursday after a new law granted it all the rights and responsibilities of a human being.
Mount Taranaki — now known as Taranaki Maunga, its Māori name — is the latest natural feature to be granted personhood in New Zealand, which has ruled that a river and a stretch of sacred land are people before. The pristine, snow-capped dormant volcano is the second highest on New Zealand's North Island at 2,518 meters (8,261 feet) and a popular spot for tourism, hiking and snow sports, The Associated Press reported.
The legal recognition acknowledges the mountain’s theft from the Māori of the Taranaki region after New Zealand was colonized. It fulfills an agreement of redress from the country's government to Indigenous people for harms perpetrated against the land since.
How can a mountain be a person? The law passed Thursday gives Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities and liabilities of a person. Its legal personality has a name: Te Kāhui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole." It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements.”
A newly created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, the law says, with four members from local Māori iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the country's Conservation Minister.
Why is this mountain special? “The mountain has long been an honored ancestor, a source of physical, cultural and spiritual sustenance and a final resting place," Paul Goldsmith, the lawmaker responsible for the settlements between the government and Māori tribes, told Parliament in a speech on Thursday.
But colonizers of New Zealand in the 18th and 19th centuries took first the name of Taranaki and then the mountain itself. In 1770, the British explorer Captain James Cook spotted the peak from his ship and named it Mount Egmont.
In 1840, Māori tribes and representatives of the British crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi — New Zealand's founding document — in which the Crown promised Māori would retain rights to their land and resources. But the Māori and English versions of the treaty differed — and Crown breaches of both began immediately.
In 1865, a vast swathe of Taranaki land, including the mountain, was confiscated to punish Māori for rebelling against the Crown. Over the next century hunting and sports groups had a say in the mountain's management — but Māori did not.
“Traditional Māori practices associated with the mountain were banned while tourism was promoted,” Goldsmith said. But a Māori protest movement of the 1970s and '80s has led to a surge of recognition for the Māori language, culture and rights in New Zealand law.
Redress has included billions of dollars in Treaty of Waitangi settlements — such as the agreement with the eight tribes of Taranaki, signed in 2023.
How will the mountain use its rights? “Today, Taranaki, our maunga, our maunga tupuna, is released from the shackles, the shackles of injustice, of ignorance, of hate," said Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, a co-leader of the political party Te Pāti Māori and a descendant of the Taranaki tribes, using a phrase that means ancestral mountain.
“We grew up knowing there was nothing anyone could do to make us any less connected,” she added.
The mountain's legal rights are intended to uphold its health and wellbeing. They will be employed to stop forced sales, restore its traditional uses and allow conservation work to protect the native wildlife that flourishes there. Public access will remain.



North Korea Has Opened Its Doors to a Group of International Travelers for the 1st Time in Years 

A group of Russian tourists, likely the first foreign travelers from any country to enter North Korea since the pandemic arrive at the Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Feb. 9, 2024. (AP)
A group of Russian tourists, likely the first foreign travelers from any country to enter North Korea since the pandemic arrive at the Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Feb. 9, 2024. (AP)
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North Korea Has Opened Its Doors to a Group of International Travelers for the 1st Time in Years 

A group of Russian tourists, likely the first foreign travelers from any country to enter North Korea since the pandemic arrive at the Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Feb. 9, 2024. (AP)
A group of Russian tourists, likely the first foreign travelers from any country to enter North Korea since the pandemic arrive at the Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Feb. 9, 2024. (AP)

A small group of foreign tourists has visited North Korea in the past week, making them the first international travelers to enter the country in five years except for a group of Russian tourists who went to the North last year.

The latest trip indicates North Korea may be gearing up for a full resumption of its international tourism to bring in much-needed foreign currency to revive its struggling economy, experts say.

The Beijing-based travel company Koryo Tours said it arranged a five-day trip from Feb. 20 to Feb. 24 for 13 international tourists to the northeastern North Korean border city of Rason, where the country’s special economic zone is located.

Koryo Tours General Manager Simon Cockerell said the travelers from the UK, Canada, Greece, New Zealand, France, Germany, Austria, Australia and Italy crossed by land from China. He said that in Rason, they visited factories, shops, schools and the statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the late grandfather and father of current leader Kim Jong Un.

"Since January of 2020, the country has been closed to all international tourists, and we are glad to have finally found an opening in the Rason area, in the far north of North Korea," Cockerell said.

"Our first tour has been and gone, and now more tourists on both group and private visits are going in, arranging trips," he added.

After the pandemic began, North Korea quickly banned tourists, jetted out diplomats and severely curtailed border traffic in one of the world’s most draconian COVID-19 restrictions. But since 2022, North Korea has been slowly easing curbs and reopening its borders.

In February 2024, North Korea accepted about 100 Russian tourists, the first foreign nationals to visit the country for sightseeing. That surprised many observers, who thought the first post-pandemic tourists would come from China, North Korea’s biggest trading partner and major ally.

A total of about 880 Russian tourists visited North Korea throughout 2024, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said, citing official Russian data. Chinese group tours to North Korea remain stalled.

This signals how much North Korea and Russia have moved closer to each other as the North has supplied weapons and troops to Russia to support its war against Ukraine. Ties between North Korea and China cooled as China showed its reluctance to join a three-way, anti-US alliance with North Korea and Russia, experts say.

Before the pandemic, tourism was an easy, legitimate source for foreign currency for North Korea, one of the world’s most sanctioned countries because of its nuclear program.

North Korea is expected to open a massive tourism site on the east coast in June. In January when President Donald Trump boasted about his ties with Kim Jong Un, he said that "I think he has tremendous condo capabilities. He’s got a lot of shoreline." That likely refers to the eastern coast site.

A return of Chinese tourists would be key to making North Korea's tourism industry lucrative because they represented more than 90% of total international tourists before the pandemic, said Lee Sangkeun, an expert at the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea's intelligence agency. He said that in the past, up to 300,000 Chinese tourists visited North Korea annually.

"North Korea has been heavily investing on tourism sites, but there has been not much domestic demand," Lee said. "We can assess that North Korea now wants to resume international tourism to bring in many tourists from abroad."

The restrictions that North Korea has typically imposed on foreign travelers — such as requirements that they move with local guides and the banning of photography at sensitive places — will likely hurt its efforts to develop tourism. Lee said that Rason, the eastern coast site and Pyongyang would be the places where North Korea feels it can easily monitor and control foreign tourists.