21/06/2023
Meet Gabrielle 👋. Gabrielle is a Master’s student on ’s MSc in , and . She recently conducted research fieldwork which explores legal personhood models for rivers, specifically the case of the Whanganui River in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and its intersection with Indigenous, particularly Māori, allyships.
The Whanganui River was granted legal personhood in 2017 through Te Awa Tupua or the Whanganui River Claims Settlement. This means that the Whanganui River is considered a person under law: it therefore must be protected from environmental harm. Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, and non-Māori are now responsible for maintaining the well-being of the river, which is deeply intertwined with local livelihoods. The 2017 settlement was the result of centuries of work: Māori had been fighting to assert their interests in the Whanganui since the 1840s when the Land Wars (1845-1972) drove Māori off their ancestral lands. Recently, Te Kōpuka nā Te Awa Tupua (Te Kōpuka) was established as a strategy group to implement Te Awa Tupua. The group is made up of Māori iwi members, non-Māori local authorities, and non-Māori members of the Horizons Regional Council.
As part of this work, Gabrielle collaborated with gatekeepers and will continue to build trust-based relationships with participants, both Māori and non-Māori. Ultimately this research aims to evaluate whether the model is effective in creating allyships between and -Indigenous stakeholders that adequately represent the rights of , and whether divergent stakeholder perspectives aid the assertion of nature-centric worldviews.
The research is in collaboration with the Wageningen University, Netherlands and part of The Riverhood project, which runs from 2021 to 2026, and focuses on analyzing global and new water movements to achieve more equitable water governance.
