Indigenous groups act to grant whales `personhood' status
For many Indigenous groups across Polynesia, whales hold an ancient sacredness and spirit that connects all life. Whales — or tohori, as Miori call them — guided their ancestors across the Pacific Ocean.
Today, those groups consider themselves to be guardians for the largest animals under the sea.
But as of Wednesday, whales are not simply animals in this region.
Indigenous leaders of New Zealand, Tahiti and the Cook Islands signed a historic treaty that recognizes whales as legal persons in a move conservationists believe will apply pressure to national governments to offer greater protections for the large mammals.
“It's fitting that the traditional guardians are initiating this,” said Mere Takoko, a Miori conservationist who leads Hinemoana Halo Ocean Initiative, the group that spearheaded the treaty. “For us, by restoring those world populations we also restore our communities.”
Conservationists have good reason to believe they will succeed: In 2017, New Zealand passed a groundbreaking law that granted personhood status to the
Whanganui River because of its importance to Miori, New Zealand's Indigenous people.
The treaty, or He Whakaputanga Moana, which translates to “declaration for the ocean,” was signed on Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands, in a ceremony attended by Tiheitia Potatau te Wherowhero VII, the Miori king, and 15 paramount chiefs of Tahiti and the Cook Islands.
In a statement, the Miori king said that as “the songs of our ancestor” grow fainter, the treaty “is not merely words on paper.”
“It's a Hinemoana Halo,” he said, “a woven cloak of protection for our taonga, our treasures — the magnificent whales.”
The significance of whales to Miori and other Indigenous groups is twofold, said Takoko, who wrote about the initiative in the climate and culture magazine Atmos.
First, they believe they can trace their ancestry directly back to whales, and second, whales were key to developing the Miori system of navigation as people followed whale migrations from island to island.
“Without the whale, we actually would have never found all of these various islands of the Pacific,” Takoko said.