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.

The New Zealand government has granted Mount Taranaki personhood on Thursday, giving it the same legal rights as a person after the country agreed to compensate its indigenous inhabitants for past colonization.

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.

Mount Taranaki joins Te Urewera, a vast native forest on the North Island, and the Whanganui River in being recognised as people under New Zealand's laws.