The Whanganui River is surging into the ocean, fattened from days of winter rain and yellowed from the earth and clay that has collapsed into its sides. Logs and debris hurtle past as dusk looms.
Sixty-one-year-old Tahi Nepia is calmly paddling his outrigger canoe, called a waka ama in his indigenous Maori language, as it is buffeted from side to side.
Before venturing out, he makes sure to ask permission from his ancestors in a prayer, or karakia. It is the top item on his safety list.
He said his ancestors inhabit the river and each time he dips his paddle into the water he touches them.
“You are giving them a mihimihi, you are giving them a massage,” Nepia said. “That’s how we see that river. It’s a part of us.”
In 2017, New Zealand passed a groundbreaking law granting personhood status to the Whanganui River. The law declares that the river is a living whole, from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements.
The law is part of a settlement with the Whanganui Iwi, comprising Maori from a number of tribes who have long viewed the river as a living force. The novel legal approach set a precedent that has been followed by some other countries including Bangladesh, which in 2019 granted all its rivers the same rights as people.
Five years after the New Zealand law was passed, 290km river upstream, the river’s enhanced standing has come to reflect a wider rebirth of Maori culture and a chance to reverse generations of discrimination against Maori and degradation of the river.
Whanganui Maori have a saying: Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au: “I am the river, and the river is me.”
Nepia, a caretaker at a Maori immersion school, is among a group of expert waka ama paddlers who have been training for the World Sprint Champs that are currently taking place in Britain. He was due to compete in the over-60 age group, both solo and as part of a crew of six.
Nepia learned how to swim in the river when his uncle threw him in at age 8. Roll on your back and float with the current, his uncle told him, and Nepia did, grinding to a stop where the water ran shallow over the stones beneath.
“You get back up, jump off the bank and float down again. That’s how it was,” he said.
He first paddled on the river in a traditional Maori long canoe in 1979, when he and about 20 of his friends at the slaughterhouse where they worked got together for a regatta celebrating Waitangi Day, which commemorates the 1840 treaty signed between the British and Maori.
Considered the nation’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi has long been a source of contention. For the past 30 years, the New Zealand government has been negotiating with tribes that have brought grievances under the treaty, which guaranteed sovereignty over their traditional lands and fisheries.
The Whanganui River deal is among dozens of settlements forged in recent years.
Adam Daniel, a scientist and adventurer, had mixed feelings at first about the river being declared a living being.
“As a scientist I always try to rely on rules and regulations to protect a river. So the personhood status was a real foreign concept to me, but what it has done is attract a lot of attention to the river, which has been really helpful in highlighting the issues,” he said.
“I’m certainly coming around to it,” he added. “I’m hoping that it really will turn the tide and help save the river.”
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