The second-highest mountain in New Zealand has been granted ‘personhood’ by the NZ parliament because it is regarded as the ancestor of the Maori who lived on its slopes. Meaning that it/he/she will have the same rights as any other NZ citizen. This mountainously important event hasn’t received anywhere near the attention it deserves in the Australian press. Despite its new-found status, it remains unlikely that Taranaki Maunga, which was formerly known as Mt Egmont, will move across the ditch to take up residence and take advantage of Australia’s social security system.

Bestowing personhood on the mountain gives rise to the vexed issue of appropriate use of the pronoun and ‘it’ is possibly incorrect. If it is a boy mountain then probably ‘he’ is the correct pronoun. According to his official website, Taranaki Maunga was a male who was in love with Pihanga who was also loved by Tongariro. The two men fought over Pihanga but Tongariro was stronger and Taranaki, ‘bearing the scars of battle, withdrew underground, carving out the bed of the Whanganui River on his journey to the sea. When he surfaced, he saw the beautiful Pouākai range standing inland and he was drawn towards her. Pouākai and Taranaki’s offspring became the trees, plants, birds, rocks and rivers flowing from their slopes’.

While this is a possible explanation for the origins of this geological feature/person, an alternative theory is that Taranaki Maunga is a volcano caused by a collision of tectonic plates and subsequent magma erupting from deep in the earth’s core. The latter theory is generally accepted today as being the most convincing and regrettably we must therefore conclude that the Maori explanation is utterly wrong. In Australia, the Aboriginal explanations for natural geological features are equally colourful and equally inaccurate. The famous Three Sisters rock formation in the New South Wales Blue Mountains was believed to be three tall very beautiful women who were being fought over by two tribes. The tribe to which they belonged was losing a battle and, to protect the three women from a fate worse than death, they were temporarily turned into the rocks which are one of NSW’s most famous tourist attractions. Unfortunately the man who turned the three women into rocks was killed in battle and no one else knew how to bring back the women and so there they stand today and again, based on current geological knowledge, we must conclude that this traditional explanation for the origins of the Three Sisters is wrong.

Every society has a set of beliefs which account for its origins. For almost two thousand years Christians subscribed to the beliefs that God made the universe in seven days and that Adam and Eve were the first humans. The steady erosion of religious authority in Christendom got underway with Galileo’s support for Copernicus’s discovery of the heliocentric solar system. Almost four centuries later, Darwin’s account of the origins of various life forms also directly contradicted basic religious thought and today, with the exception of a few dotty American creationists, most Christians now accept some form of Darwinian evolutionary theory. The role that Galileo and Darwin had in the decline of the church’s authority is contested. What is beyond dispute is that Christianity is no longer able to rescue Western society from the slough of despond which we call moral relativism. The moral compass of most people in the West is no longer set by the church.

Like Christianity, the Islamic faith also claimed that Adam and Eve were the first humans and Muslims believed they were created by Allah. This has presented real problems for the mullahs who are deeply divided over the Darwinian theory. For Muslims, the Koran is a sacred text whose truth cannot be doubted and where The Origin of Species disagrees with the Koran and associated Hadiths, then it must be wrong. Consequently, the theory of evolution is a taboo topic in most educational centres in the Muslim world. While Christianity and Islam may differ on many things, they both claim that their definition of what is sacred is to be found in either the Koran or the Bible. But while the moral authority of the Christian churches has diminished, that of the mullahs remains strong. Pope Gregory could threaten to burn Galileo to death in a public auto-da-fé. That sort of power has long since vanished from Christianity’s leaders. The mullahs still have the power to authorise the execution of heretics and millions of followers would be delighted to perform a fatwa for the greater glory of Allah.

Unlike Christians, Australia’s Aborigines and the New Zealand Maori have no problems in defining what is, and what is not, sacred. In the absence of any established original text, any Tom, Dick or Harry can describe something as sacred and the New Zealand and Australian governments, at every level, have bent over backwards to provide bureaucratic authority for this practice.

The website of the Central Land Council based in Alice Springs tell us that ‘… sacred sites are viewed as places of immense spiritual power, and any act that disrespects or “violates” their sanctity can be seen as potentially harmful, not only to the individuals who disrespect the site but also to the people responsible for protecting and maintaining its sacredness; sometimes, even simply revealing the location or discussing details about a sacred site can be considered a transgression’.

The Maori community groups that have acquired a new status for their brother Taranaki Maunga were quick to explain that ‘pakeha’ will still be welcome to ascend his slopes. In Australia we have not been so lucky with Mt Warning in NSW, Uluru, and at least eight locations in the Grampians in Western Victoria now being closed to non-Aboriginal people.

Rock climbing is a sport which requires not only courage but considerable discipline. The Grampians are the location for internationally famous rock faces and the people who have climbed there for decades have put up a spirited and disciplined campaign to maintain access to the location. In the end, a bunch of self-appointed custodians will probably win and the climbers will be told that they can go elsewhere.

Spiritual power is a mysterious force. The more it is used, the more it inspires opposition. The sacred sites fandango, like the mullah’s fatwas, will one day be overthrown.