New Maori Queen anointed in New Zealand as King Tuheitia is buried

New Zealand’s Maori chiefs have crowned a new queen in a traditional ceremony which also laid to rest King Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII.

Nga Wai Hono i te Po, the youngest child of the late monarch, became the second Maori queen, kuini in the native language, in a tradition dating back to 1858.

Her father died on Friday following heart surgery, just days after the 18th anniversary of his coronation.

Mourners flocked to the North Island town of Ngaruawahia on Thursday to pay final respects to the late monarch and witness the ascension to the throne of the 27-year-old Queen Nga Wai.

As she was escorted onto Turangawaewae marae – an ancestral meeting place, where her father’s casket lay draped in feathered cloaks – cheers rang out among thousands crowded around TV screens outside and waiting along the banks of the Waikato River to glimpse the funeral procession.

After her ascension, Queen Nga Wai accompanied the late king’s coffin in a flotilla of traditional canoes along the river as he was guided by Maori warriors to his final resting place.

The events marked the end of a week-long funeral rite for the late king, 69, who had in recent months rallied New Zealand’s indigenous people to unity in the face of a more racially divisive political culture.

He became king after his mother’s death in 2006 and on Thursday was buried alongside her in an unmarked grave on Taupiri Maunga, a mountain of spiritual significance to his iwi, or tribe.

His daughter’s ascension represents the rise of a new generation of Maori leaders in New Zealand, one which grew up steeped in a resurging language that had once almost died out.

The Kingitanga, or Maori royalty movement has a ceremonial mandate rather than a legal one and was formed after the British colonisation of New Zealand to unite tribes in resistance to forced sales of indigenous land and the loss of the Maori language and culture.

After a centre-right government took power in New Zealand last November and began to enact policies reversing recognition of the Māori language, people and customs, the late monarch took the unusual step in January of calling a national meeting of tribes which was attended by 10,000 people.

“The best protest we can make right now is being Maori. Be who we are. Live our values. Speak our reo,” he told them, using the Māori word for language. “Just be Maori. Be Maori all day, every day. We are here. We are strong.”

Tuheitia urged New Zealanders to embrace the concept of kotahitanga – unity of purpose – in a cause that he said had “room for everyone”.

His words were echoed throughout the days of his funeral, including by political leaders whose plans he had rallied to oppose.

In a reflection of the place that Maori language and customs have grown to hold in New Zealand’s public life in recent decades, his funeral was attended not only by Maori tribes but by leaders of all political parties, past prime ministers, leaders of Pacific Island nations, diplomats and representatives of the British crown.

Tens of thousands of ordinary people also flocked there. Many spoke to each other in Māori, a language that had steadily waned after colonization until activists in the 1970s provoked its renaissance. Among their initiatives was the establishment of Māori language pre-schools, the first graduates of which are now young adults.

The late king, a truck driver before he took the throne, was a surprise appointment to the monarchy, which is chosen by a council and is not required to be hereditary.

But the new queen was groomed for the role and had accompanied her father in his work during recent years.

Her ascension comes at a fraught political moment. Since 1858, the Kingitanga has championed Maori sovereignty and the other promises of modern New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between the Crown and Maori tribes.

In the years since, translation issues and attempts to reinterpret the treaty have at times provoked conflict, which has in recent months flared again.