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.

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.

A mountain in New Zealand has been granted the same legal rights as a person, becoming the third natural feature in the country to be recognised as an individual. Mount Taranaki – now known as Taranaki Maunga,