The Whanganui River, located in the north island of New Zealand, has a special and spiritual importance for the Maori people. The New Zealand Parliament has just passed a bill which gives the ...

A Māori pa, or fortified village, on the Whanganui River, on the North Island of New Zealand in 1902. Print Collector/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Te Mataruru Marae -- or Māori communal place ...

In what’s believed to be a world first, New Zealand ... the Whanganui River valley. When colonists arrived, it was the most densely populated part of what is today called the North Island.

As a child in the 1970s, Gerrard Albert played on the mud flats at the mouth of New Zealand’s Whanganui River where raw sewage from the nearby town spilled into the estuary and out to the ocean.