No it didn't, although I wasn't disappointed. Instead it brought together strands around the vital place of the Whanganui River for Whanganui Maori, how the settlement was bringing an innovative and world-leading approach to environmental management and challenging broader assumptions around the historical state of knowledge and the law.
So yes, quite a big set of thoughts. However, Dame Anne wove those threads together with her incredibly engaging style.
And it all made sense. I won't pretend that I can do justice to Dame Anne's elucidation of the relationship (instead, wait for it to be replayed on Radio New Zealand in late December) but will give you some hints of what I picked up.
Kicking off with an admission; I am embarrassed to confess I hadn't really been paying much attention to the Whanganui River settlement and while I had heard that the river was now (well, once passed into legislation) its own legal personality known as Te Awa Tupua, I hadn't really thought about what that meant.
This is envisioned as a solution in part to the many-layered challenge for Maori to have their voice heard in a new way. Internationally there is much interest from other Indigenous people around this fresh approach.
Further over the conference, we were honoured to hear insights into the strategy and process from Whanganui River Maori Trust Board's Gerrard Albert and Nancy Tuaine, who were key to the negotiations.
It's a bit hard to get your head around the river as a person quickly without the benefit of these discussions although the deed actually does a pretty good job. It says: "Te Awa Tupua is an indivisible and living whole comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements."
The spiritual was one aspect of Dame Anne's talk. It nearly lost me, with her talk of the "cosmos" - that's not a word I readily use. As someone with a science degree, I highly value the underpinning of good decision-making with science and research.
However, Dame Anne recaptured me when she described an alternate view that the commodification of our natural world creates both risk and undervalues the interconnections, not all understood through traditional measures. It is very hard to appreciate our world if we insist on separating the arts from the sciences, compounded by a more recent drive to put an economic value on everything as if the market will save us.
It took me back to my Massey days when I went on a field trip to the headwaters of the Whanganui. I remember so clearly the shock I felt at seeing the mountaintop waters disappearing into one of the Tongariro Power Scheme intakes, with barely a trickle remaining out the other side. In fact my impassioned response to this sight meant my uni colleagues christened me with a new nickname "Headwaters" for the rest of that trip.
The river agreement is radical but still has constraints yet to be tested, and whether it will be the vital contribution to managing environmental threats and strengthening connections in the long-term will only be proven over time. One thing is clear, it delivers hope.
-Nicola Young is a former Department of Conservation manager who now works for global consultancy AECOM. Educated at Wanganui Girls' College, she has a science degree and is the mother of two boys.
