How to Live Together with Incommensurable Ontologies: The Case of the Whanganui River Settlement

This paper grapples with a fundamental question for a decolonial ecology that is posed by Malcom Ferdinand: How can a world be created from Earth and from its plurality of others and their multiple ontologies? The issue of incommensurable ontologies is explored through a case study that concerns a New Zealand legal settlement between local Māori tribes and the government, Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017. The Settlement is cited internationally due to its granting of the status of legal person to the river system, that is informed by an Indigenous view of nature. However, despite its important gestures towards a Māori ontology and traditional rights, the Settlement is still a document in law of British origin. In the paper, I discuss the mechanisms through which the two ontologies figure: juxtaposition, passages between incommensurable entities, extension of Western notions, adoption of alien concepts, and third space newness.