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Human Rights Stories: The River’s Day

Stories and News No. 970

New Zealand has decided to grant a river the same legal rights attributed to a human being.
After 140 years of negotiations, a Maori tribe gets the recognition for the Whanganui River. This implies, from now on, that the latter must be treated as a person.


The day of the river.
We want to call it so.
So we want to remember it.
Today is an historic day, the most important in its story, the very first, the one that gives life to all others.
It took forty years after a hundred more to get it.
The exceptional, unexpected and painful, normalcy.
The River’s Day is our day.
The reasons are many, your honor or dishonor, that is the same.
Since the party has now begun and we are already in the streets to celebrate.
We are children of the river, we are composed of water and hope almost in totality, because the flesh is thin and the bones are brittle, but a raging torrent impels us, in spite of appearances.
We look for the sea from the top of a mountain of desires, waiting for a mouth of any form, since delta or estuary is the same to us.
What matters is that the goal will show itself before eyelids had been closed for good.
We just need to see.
To dream is enough.
The day when the river will join the father.
The instant it will embrace the mother.
With constant waves there will be no betrayal for every drop of our scroll.
We will merge with the life that awaits and we will be something unique.
Part of the natural design.
The saint cycle that lifts you into the sky without killing you.
Bringing you back to earth without hurting you.
Today is the day of the river and it is a great one.
Because if you are an inseparable portion of the waves you cannot sink.
You cannot be shipwrecked.
You cannot die within yourself, because you are the water.
You are the life.
You are alive.
As everything is.
Let’s give thanks to the sisters and the brothers who did not give up.
And yes, let us do the same with those who finally surrendered to it.
The underestimated, confused and abused normalcy.
Because if a river took forty years plus hundred to be recognized as a human being.
It means that our victory is not so far away...





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