A River with Personhood: Witi Ihimaera’s Novel

In this article Witi Ihimaera's "The Whale Rider" (1987) is situated in two contexts in particular: in the methodology of law and literature studies and the emerging field of the so-called Blue Humanities.By connecting literary studies with legal scholarship, the aim is to re-read the novel to show that it anticipates some of the most important and urgent developments of our time.These developments, in turn, are both context-specific and globally relevant: In New Zealand, Māori and Pākehā communities continue to be in dialogue about the meaning of reconciliation, about how to come to terms with New Zealand's history as a former settler colonial state.This includes reconciling Māori and Pākehā epistemologies when it comes to environmental protection.This article looks at how in New Zealand, a recent court decision wrote Māori epistemology into law by giving the status of personhood to a river.The authors situate this court decision in the legal history pertaining to bodies of water and show how Ihimaera's novel can in fact be said to anticipate this decision.