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In March 2017, the Te Awa Tupua Act passes by the New Zealand Parliament. In the Act, the Whanganui River, the longest navigable river in New Zealand, is described as "an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements." The idea of kinship with the Whanganui reflects in the Maori language sections of Te Awa Tupua Act. It relates relations between people and waterways. This act recognises for other ancestral water bodies in New Zealand. The river is a living community of fish, plants, people, ancestors and water links by whakapapa. In ancestral M-uori understandings, the relationship between people and the earth defines by whakapapa. In their report on the Whanganui River claim, the Waitangi Tribunal focused almost entirely upon this matter of rights in waterways–of the Whanganui kin groups on the one hand, and the Crown on the other.

On 2 March 1815, on a hilltop in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, a rangatira (chief) named Ruatara lay dying. In his suffering, he complained to Thomas Kendall, a missionary who had travelled with him from Port Jackson (present-day Sydney), of ‘want of breath’ and pain. Because of his illness, Ruatara was prohibited from eating. When Kendall tried to persuade him to take some food, he replied ‘When breath comes, I shall eat’ (Thomas Kendall, Journal 1815, in Elder 1934: 75, 77).