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🌊 I Am the River and the River Is Me

The Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand was the first river in the world granted legal personhood; for Māori, it is a living being — an ancestor. This documentary follows river guardian Ned Tapa as he invites a First Nations elder from Australia and his daughter, activists fighting for

I am the river and the river is me

The Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand was the first river in the world granted legal personhood; for Māori, it is a living being — an ancestor. This documentary follows river guardian Ned Tapa as he invites a First Nations elder from Australia and his daughter, activists fighting for their own dying river, on a five-day canoe trip down the sacred waters. A moving portrait of what it means to relate to a river as kin rather than resource.

Written by

Danu Poyner

Danu is a writer and founder of Grokkist, a learning community in the deepest sense. His work centres on coherence, curiosity, and helping people make sense of themselves in relation to ideas, experience, and one another.

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