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 ...

Chris Finlayson, New Zealand Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, admitted the arrangement is a unique one in the country's history — but he says it's not as unfamiliar as you may think.

More than 40 years later, a handful of laws is beginning to give effect to Stone’s “radical new theory.” A river in New Zealand has led the way.

A river in New Zealand has become the first in the world to be granted the same legal rights as a person. Wellington in New Zealand passed a bill on Wednesday for the Whanganui River, which flows f… ...

To the Maori, indigenous people who live along New Zealand’s Whanganui River, the water isn’t only sacred — it’s part of their being. The community has a saying, “Ko au te awa. Ko te awa ...

Long revered by New Zealand's Maori people, the river's interests will now be represented by two people. The Maori had been fighting for over 160 years to get this recognition for their river, a ...

In 2017, New Zealand granted legal personhood to the Whanganui River. Since then, other nations have followed suit in an effort to protect the environment.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons/ Jacqui McGowan. The Whanganui River on New Zealand’s North Island has long been considered sacred by the Maori people of the region. Now, a settlement that has ended a ...

For more than 700 years, the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, fought to maintain their spiritual connection to the Whanganui River. Mostly, it was a losing battle: Rapids were ...

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 ...