New Zealand’s Maori have chosen to name a 27-year-old woman as their queen after her father died and was buried on a “sacred” mountain earlier that day.
“This is a departure from traditional Maori leadership choices where the eldest child, usually a male, tends to succeed,” cultural adviser Karaitiana Taiuru told AFP.
“The Maori world is yearning for younger leadership” in a period of much change, he said.
Nga Wai hono i te po Paki was acclaimed at an induction ceremony on the North Island attended by thousands.
Charles III as head of state
The new queen is the youngest child and only daughter of King Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, who died peacefully on Friday aged 69, surrounded by his family, just days after the 18th anniversary of his coronation, a spokesperson said.
She was led to her throne by a group of tattooed, bare-chested men carrying ceremonial spears, while a choir of women dressed in black sang in her honor.
Wearing a crown of leaves on her head and a whalebone necklace around her neck, the new queen sat beside her father’s coffin while prayers and songs were recited, and rites performed.
To mark the anniversary of her father’s coronation in 2016, she got a traditional tattoo on her chin.
She previously studied Māori language and customary law at the University of Waikato (North Island) and also taught Māori songs and dances to children.
Second Queen
King Charles III, the British monarch, is the head of state of New Zealand, while the Māori monarch plays a largely ceremonial role, with no legal status.
But it has considerable cultural and sometimes political significance, as a powerful symbol of Māori identity and kinship.
The Maori are believed to originate from the islands around Tahiti and represent around 17% of New Zealand’s population, or some 900,000 people.
Queen Nga Wai is the eighth Māori monarch and second queen.
Her grandmother, Queen Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, previously held the role for four decades until 2006.
A flotilla of four “wakas”, war canoes, carried the king’s coffin along the Waikato River.
Colonization by the British
The funeral procession then stopped at the foot of the “sacred” Taupiri mountain. Rugby players, acting as pallbearers, then climbed the steep slopes to the summit to allow the former monarch to join his predecessors.
The arrival of Europeans in New Zealand in 1642 brought colonisation, anti-Maori discrimination and wars that only ceased after the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.
This treaty, signed between the British and hundreds of Maori chiefs, is considered the founding document of New Zealand and established British control over the country.
The Kiingitanga (Maori King Movement) was founded in 1858 with the aim of uniting the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand under a single ruler, 18 years after the Treaty of Waitangi.
- BFMTV.com
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