The Whanganui river is surging into the ocean, fattened from days of winter rain and yellowed from the earth and clay that has collapsed into its sides. Logs and debris hurtle past as dusk looms.
Sixty-one-year-old Tahi Nepia is calmly paddling his outrigger canoe, called a waka ama in his Indigenous Maori language, as it is buffeted from side to side.
Before venturing out, he first asks permission from his ancestors in a prayer. He says his ancestors inhabit the river and each time he dips his paddle into the water he touches them.
“You are giving them a massage,” Nepia says. “That's how we see that river. It's a part of us.”
In 2017, New Zealand passed a groundbreaking law granting personhood status to the Whanganui River.
The law declares that the river is a living whole, from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements.
The law was part of a settlement with the Whanganui Iwi, comprising Maori from a number of tribes who have long viewed the river as a living force.
Five years after the law was passed, The Associated Press followed the 290-kilometre river upstream to find out what its status means to those whose lives are entwined with its waters.
For many, its enhanced standing has come to reflect a wider rebirth of Maori culture and a chance to reverse generations of discrimination against Maori and degradation of the river.
Whanganui Maori have a saying: Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au: I am the river, and the river is me.
Nepia, a caretaker at a Maori immersion school, is among a group of expert waka ama paddlers who have been training for the World Sprint Champs in Britain.
He learned to swim when his uncle threw him in the river at age 8. He first paddled on the river in a traditional Maori long canoe in 1979, when he and about 20 co-workers at a slaughterhouse got together for a regatta on Waitangi Day, commemorating the 1840 treaty signed between the British and Maori.
Considered New Zealand's founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi has long been a source of contention.
For 30 years, New Zealand's government has been negotiating with tribes that brought grievances under the treaty, which guaranteed sovereignty over their traditional lands and fisheries.
The Whanganui River deal is among dozens of settlements forged in recent years.
At its mouth in the town of Whanganui, the river is permanently discoloured from the erosion that has come from turning what was once forest along the banks into farmland. The excessive sediment suffocates fish and plant life.
“We need to grow trees instead of chopping them down,” Nepia says. “The water shouldn't be like that.”