ONCE UPON A RIVER
Hayden Potaka dips two fern fronds in the water and says a rapid karakia for our safe passage down the Whanganui River. With the last lines –“Haumi ē, hui ē, tāiki ē!” – solemnity gives way to a grin as he flicks river water into my face with the fern.
The fronds are called rau, he says, poking their stalks into specially drilled holes on the front of our two red Canadian canoes. (I’ll be sharing one with Florian Sanktjohanser, a German travel writer, while Nga Roma Poa, our river guide and cultural navigator, will pilot the other.) The rau are for spiritual protection, Hayden says – and a sign to others that we’re being guided by someone from the awa, the river. “Ka pai,” he says. “See you in a few days.”
It’s 7.30am, chilly and overcast, and the canoe wobbles as I climb clumsily in. I feel a bit wobbly, too – nervous about how I’ll handle the paddling, about capsizing, about the rapids ahead. We’ll be on the river for three full days, from here at Whakahoro, all the way to Pipiriki, 88km downriver. We push off into the narrow tributary at Whakahoro, and a few hundred metres later enter the main flow of New Zealand’s second-longest river – the first in the world to be recognised in law as a living being.
Three years ago, in March 2017, the Whanganui River gained the rights – and responsibilities – of legal person-hood, as part of the treaty settlement between Whanganui iwi and the Crown. The river was recognised as Te Awa Tupua, “a living and indivisible whole” comprising the whole of the waterway “from the mountains to the sea, incorporating its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements”.
I wanted to know more about what all this means – to find out what impact the new
