New Zealand queen ascends to Māori throne at age 27

• New Zealand's Maori King Tuheitia Potatau Te Wherohero VII (69) has died. His daughter, Nga Wai Hono I Tepo (27), will become the new Queen.
• Nga Wai Hono i Te Po is only the second woman to become Māori monarch in a tradition that dates back to 1858.
• King Tuheitia's funeral was attended by Māori as well as leaders of all political parties, former prime ministers, Pacific island leaders, diplomats and representatives of the British Royal Family.

Thousands of people arrived at the frosty dawn, parking their cars remotely and walking down winding country roads with their children perched on their shoulders. They arrived dressed in mourning clothes, wearing crowns of ferns and kawakawa leaves, and carrying bone carvings and wedges of deep-green pounamu, New Zealand jade, across their chests.

Mourners gathered in the town of Ngaruawahia on New Zealand's North Island on Thursday to pay their final respects to New Zealand's Maori king, Tuheitia Potatau Te Wherowhero VII, who died six days ago, and to watch the coronation of his daughter, Ngā Wai Hono i Te Po. The new queen, 27, is only the second woman to become Maori monarch, following a tradition that dates back to 1858.

As she was escorted to Turangawawe marae, where her father's coffin lay wrapped in a feather cloak, cheers erupted from the thousands gathered around outdoor television screens and those waiting on the wide, flat banks of the Waikato River to catch a glimpse of Kingi Tuheitia's funeral procession. After she was enthroned, Ngā Wai Hono i Te Po accompanied the late king in a fleet of traditional canoes as he was led by Māori warriors to his final resting place.

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The event marked the end of a week-long tangihanga (funeral) for 69-year-old Kingi Tuheitia, a leader who has led indigenous New Zealanders to unite in recent months in the face of an increasingly racially divisive political culture. His daughter's elevation symbolizes the rise of a new generation of Māori leaders in New Zealand who grew up immersed in a revitalized language that was once nearly extinct.

King Kingi Tuheitia died after undergoing heart surgery last Friday, just days after celebrating his 18th year on the throne. He became king after the death of his mother in 2006 and was buried beside her on Thursday in an unmarked grave on Taupiri Maunga, a mountain of spiritual significance to his iwi tribe.

Kingitanga, or the Māori Royalty Movement, is not a constitutional monarchy; King Charles III of the United Kingdom is New Zealand's head of state. The movement has ceremonial rather than legal authority, and was formed in the years after the British colonisation of New Zealand to unite Māori tribes in resistance to the forced sale of indigenous land and the loss of Māori language and culture.

Monarchs traditionally play politics lightly and Tuheitia was remembered this week as a quiet, humble man, but his voice has grown louder in recent months.

After a centre-right government came to power in New Zealand last November and began implementing policies that undermined recognition of Māori language, people and practices, Tuheitia took the extraordinary step of convening a national conference of tribes in January, which was attended by 10,000 people.

“The best protest we can do right now is to be Māori. Be who we are, live our values ​​and speak our reo,” he told them, using the Māori word for language. “Just be Māori. Be Māori all day, every day. We are here. We are strong.”

Tuheitia urged New Zealanders to embrace the concept of kotahitanga (unity of purpose), saying there was “room for everyone” in the cause.

His words were repeated throughout the funeral, including by the political leaders he had rallied against. Reflecting the elevated place of Māori language and customs in New Zealand public life in recent decades, his funeral was attended not only by Māori tribesmen, but also leaders of all political parties, former prime ministers, Pacific island leaders, diplomats and representatives of the British Royal Family.

Tens of thousands of members of the public also gathered there, many speaking Māori, a language that had slowly declined after colonisation but which activists helped to revive in the 1970s, including by setting up Māori language kindergartens, whose first graduates are now young people.

Tuheitia's daughter is one of them. While her father comes from a generation where speaking the language wasn't encouraged, she was immersed in it and attended a Māori immersion school. Ngā Wai Hono I Te Po has a degree in Māori customs and is a skilled performer of kapa haka, an indigenous performance art.

The late king, who was a truck driver before ascending to the throne, was suddenly appointed to the royal family. Royals are chosen by a council and do not have to be hereditary. But the new queen was raised as a member of the royal family and accompanied her father on his official duties in recent years.

Her accession comes at a politically difficult time: Since 1858, Kingitanga has defended Māori sovereignty and other commitments in the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding document of modern New Zealand, signed between the Crown and Māori tribes in 1840. Since then, issues of translation and attempts to reinterpret the treaty have occasionally sparked conflict, which has flared up again in recent months.

“The treaty provides the basis for all of us to work together. Don't change that – it will harm us,” Tuheitia said at a ceremony marking his coronation just days before his death. New Zealand faces a storm of curtailed Maori rights, but he said there is “no need to worry. In this storm we are stronger together.”

After the new queen was anointed and ceremonies performed for her father, mourners crowded behind the hearse as it headed to the banks of a river sacred to the tribe, where Tuheitia's coffin was escorted in a traditionally carved canoe as he was driven up the mountain. Mourners, up to 10 deep in some places, stood in silence and bowed their heads as he passed.

As the late king was carried to the base of the mountain under clear afternoon skies, thunderous haka – ritual chants – rang out from mourners waiting among the gravestones dotting the steep hillside, and dozens of people helped carry him to his burial site at the top of the mountain.

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Many people, including many young families, had waited for hours to watch the procession pass by, and commentators said the queen's accession marked a cultural rebirth, with most Maori, who make up about 20 percent of New Zealand's population, under 40.

Among them on Thursday was 9-year-old Awa Tuqiri, whose family drove nearly two hours from Auckland to watch the canoe carrying the late king go by.

“It's been amazing because on the boat we just do haka and waiata,” he said, using words from chants and songs in Maori. Tukiri, who attends Kura Kaupapa, an increasingly popular immersion school, said the best part of being Maori is “just hanging out together and speaking Maori to each other”.