New Zealand’s Maori chiefs yesterday anointed a 27-year-old queen as their new monarch, a surprise choice hailed as a symbol of change for the country’s indigenous community.
Nga Wai hono i te po Paki was cheered by thousands as she ascended a high-backed wooden throne during an elaborate ceremony in Ngaruawahia.
She is the youngest daughter of King Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, who died on Friday last week after heart surgery.
Photo: AFP
After being elected by a council of chiefs, Nga Wai was ushered to the throne by a phalanx of bare-chested and tattooed men bearing ceremonial weapons who chanted, screamed and shouted in acclamation.
The queen, wearing a wreath of leaves, a cloak and a whalebone necklace, sat beside her father’s coffin as emotive rites, prayers and chants were performed. After six days laid in state, the late king was carried down the Waikato River as part of a flotilla of four war canoes, each powered by more than a dozen rowers.
His funerary procession passed throngs of onlookers camped on the riverbanks, before stopping at the foot of Mount Taupiri.
Photo: AFP / Kiingitanga
From there, three rugby union teams acted as pallbearers, shepherding his coffin up steep slopes to the summit and the final resting place of Maori royals.
The Maori monarch is a mostly ceremonial role with no legal status, but it has enormous cultural and sometimes political significance as a potent symbol of identity and kinship.
As the king’s only daughter and his youngest child, Queen Nga Wai was considered an outside choice to become his successor.
One of her two elder brothers had taken on many ceremonial duties during their father’s periods of ill health and had been widely tipped to take over.
Queen Nga Wai is the eighth Maori monarch and the second queen. Her grandmother, Queen Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, held the position for four decades until 2006.
“It is certainly a break from traditional Maori leadership appointments which tend to succeed to the eldest child, usually a male,” Maori cultural adviser Karaitiana Taiuru told reporters.
Taiuru said it was a “privilege” to witness a young Maori woman become queen, particularly given the ageing leadership and mounting challenges faced by the community.
“The Maori world has been yearning for younger leadership to guide us in the new world of AI [artificial intelligence], genetic modification, global warming and in a time of many other social changes that question and threaten us and indigenous peoples of New Zealand,” he said. “These challenges require a new and younger generation to lead us.”
The kiingitanga, or Maori king movement, was founded in 1858 to unite New Zealand’s tribes and provide a single counterpart to the colonial ruler, Britain’s Queen Victoria.
“People think Maori people are one nation — we’re not. We’re many tribes, many iwi. We have different ways of speaking out,” said Joanne Teina, who traveled from Auckland for the ceremony. “The kiingitanga was created to create unity — among people who were fighting each other for thousands of years, before pakeha [Europeans] came along.”
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS