#the land of new hope

[reasonsforhope]

A mountain in New Zealand considered an ancestor by Indigenous people was recognized as a legal person on Thursday [January 30, 2025] 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 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 rebeling 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.

Do other parts of New Zealand have personhood?

New Zealand was the first country in the world to recognize natural features as people when a law passed in 2014 granted personhood to Te Urewera, a vast native forest on the North Island. Government ownership ceased and the tribe Tūhoe became its guardian.

"Te Urewera is ancient and enduring, a fortress of nature, alive with history; its scenery is abundant with mystery, adventure, and remote beauty," the law begins, before describing its spiritual significance to Māori. In 2017, New Zealand recognized the Whanganui River as human, as part of a settlement with its local iwi.

How much support did the law receive?

The bill recognizing the mountain's personhood was affirmed unanimously by Parliament's 123 lawmakers. The vote was greeted by a ringing waiata — a Māori song — from the public gallery, packed with dozens who had traveled to the capital, Wellington, from Taranaki.

The unity provided brief respite in a tense period for race relations in New Zealand. In November, tens of thousands of people marched to Parliament to protest a law that would reshape the Treaty of Waitangi by setting rigid legal definitions for each clause. Detractors say the law — which is not expected to pass — would strip Māori of legal rights and dramatically reverse progress from the past five decades.

-via NPR, January 31, 2025

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Note: The article doesn't get fully into the implications of the broader, global "rights of nature" movement (of which this is part), which is powerful tool for not only recognizing Indigenous ways of relating to the world, but also preventing ecological damage.

Examples of rights of nature include rivers having the right to not be polluted, etc. Powerful tool for leveraging the courts and legal frameworks against environmental destruction.

[lilybug-02]

Eimmet High...temmiE high. OMG!

Part 28 || First || Previous || Next

--Full Series--

Next update may take...much longer! I have finals and an internship and not to mention I have to draw- A LOT :')

[hope-for-the-planet]

From the article:

"This program supports jobs and local economies, improves recreation in rural and underserved areas, and aligns with our commitment to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 under the America the Beautiful initiative,” said Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis. [...] A portion of that $235 million will be used to acquire about 19 acres of private land on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada Carson Range within the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Area. The purchase is expected to help protect sensitive species, such as California spotted owl, flammulated owl, and northern goshawk, while expanding recreation access to public lands. 

[aseuki]

Posting it on main too, but here's my contribution to the @hoshinokaabi-secretsanta with a gift for @mastercrowned!! All of the given prompts were So Delightful, but in the end I had to go with drawing Morpho ordering a Kirby Burgie (or maybe 10) asdlkgjn

version without the text bubble under the cut!

This whole event was a Delight to participate in! Had I more time and energy I would have Defo scribbled out more, but for Now pls enjoy my Favorite part of the image that Unfortunately got masked by the completed piece which is.

Scrungle Dee

[phonification]

brain ghost nickel

[kirby-manga-translated]

Kirby: Manmaru Nikki (AKA Daily Round Diary) - Volume 6, Chapter 13 English Translation

Following up one finale with another! The end of the Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe story arc is here, and it is one of the most serious chapters of Kirby manga I've ever translated. There's, like, one joke in the entire thing. Very much worth reading for any Magolor fans out there!

Read the full chapter at the following links:

Imgur

MangaDex

Google Drive

And you can find the last chapter here!

[grayrazor]

A moribund world. A titanic eldritch tower casts a blasphemous shadow across the blasted landscape.

[aeriondripflame]

elia martell & lyanna stark & the yellow wallpaper.

the yellow wallpaper, charlotte perkins gilman. snow white & the huntsman (2012). the outpost (2018-2021).

[offorestsongs]

On stage, only one star can shine the brightest. And well, we all know who that's going to be.

[SSR] Józefina - Playful Land

happy Halloween y'all 💀🎃🖤

this took me longer than i've expected but finally, it's here!! my girl got her first card i'm so happy for her <33 no voicelines this time tho but i may write them after i finish playing thru the whole story

taglist (ask to be added <3): @thehollowwriter @tixdixl @scint1llat3

[felassan]

DA Foundation Technical Director Jon Renish and DA Writer Mary Kirby have tweeted saying that they are among those who have been laid off from BioWare.

[yarrowleef]

dude nightheart and sunbeams entire relationship is so funny. if I felt like digging through other books id make a compilation of these moments. No, Nightheart will not be by Sunbeams side to help her through the invasion of ShadowClan. Nightheart will almost get violently executed in RiverClan, and Sunbeam will only show up after the problem resolved itself (off screen). Sunbeam doesn't even feel like grieving with him around.

this entire arc, every major problem required them to ~sadly~ separate, and then reconvene for some generic niceties after its all over. I really thought, at bare minimum, the reason that kept happening was going to accumulate in them doing SOMETHING major together in the climax of this final book, like, 'something something our relationship can survive all the plot inconveniences that kept us apart bc this event proves why we're stronger as a team blablabla'

but no girl, their asses are NOT stronger together, they are not supporting each other through anything, they are not working together to accomplish a single goal. right to the end, every one of their greatest physical/emotional trials must be done separate

like. like it's incredible. the most go girl give us nothing relationship development of all time. i cant even find it in me to be mad. they are so lame it loops around into comedy. is this a prank why did they write it like this help

[reasonsforhope]

I know this happened last year, but Illinois has its first reservation! The Department of the Interior placed 130 acres of land in DeKalb County near Shabbona State Park into trust for the Prairie Band Potawatomi.

!!! That's huge! I had no idea!! Congratulations to be Prairie Band Potawatomi!!!

"Nearly 200 years after Native Americans were forced out of Illinois, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation has become the first federally recognized tribal nation in the state after a decision from the U.S. Department of the Interior last week.

The move represents the first victory in the tribe’s larger effort to regain the approximately 1,280 acres of its ancestral land in Illinois via legislation in both the General Assembly and Congress.

But the tribe first had to spend $10 million over the last 20 years to repurchase the first 130 acres of the Shab-eh-nay Reservation, located in what is now DeKalb County, that the federal government illegally sold out from under Chief Shab-eh-nay around 1850.

Nearly two centuries later, Prairie Band Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick – a fourth-great grandson of Chief Shab-eh-nay – signed paperwork on Friday that allows the Department of the Interior to place those 130 acres into a trust, which gives the tribe sovereignty over the land.

Rupnick said he’d heard the story of his ancestral land in Illinois “ever since I was a child” from his grandparents, and said his mother started the push to reclaim the Prairie Band’s land three decades ago when she was the tribe’s chairperson.

“For me to actually get it accomplished and signed, honestly, words couldn't describe the feeling that I had that, you know, when I actually completed that task,” he told Capitol News Illinois on Monday, adding that the credit should be shared with his entire counsel and tribal membership more broadly. “And now the real work begins.”"

-via NPR Illinois, April 30, 2024

[luck-of-the-drawings]

!!! FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING!!! [IM NOT FUCKIN AROUND!!]

REACHED THE CUSP OF 'THIS MAY NEVER BE ABSOLUTELY FINISHED N IF I DONT SHOW IT NOW, IT WILL NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.' SO HERE, A PROJECT IVE BEEN ORBITING AROUND UHH SINCE 2021 OR SO.

[hope-for-the-planet]

From the article:

Andes Amazon Fund celebrates the creation of the Arroyo Guarichona Municipal Protected Area in the department of Beni, Bolivia. Home to floodplains, tributaries, expansive grasslands, vast forests, and evidence of pre-Columbian societies, Arroyo Guarichona safeguards both the cultural and ecological heritage of Northern Bolivia. The new area covers 492,815 acres (199,435 ha), and is home to Indigenous peoples, farmers, and local communities that pushed for the creation of the conservation area. 

[thesunniestartist]

IM SOBBINB HES DOIN THE FAMILY GUY DEATH POSE

[shutterandsentence]

"We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through the darkness to a safe and sane future."

--John F. Kennedy

Photo: Chicago Botanic Gardens, Illinois