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.

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.

A settlement under which a New Zealand mountain has been granted the same legal right as a person has become law after years of negotiations. It means Taranaki Maunga [Mt Taranaki] will effectively own itself,