New Zealand’s Maori appoint a new queen

New Zealand’s Maori people named a new monarch on Thursday, choosing a 27-year-old queen in a symbolic but weighty role as some of the indigenous group’s hard-won rights face a rollback.

Nga Wai Hono i te Po succeeds her father, Kiingi Tuheitia, who died last week after 18 years as king and was buried in a funeral service on Thursday. The new queen, his youngest daughter, is the eighth Maori monarch since the office was created in 1858 to unite the tribes as European settlers advanced.

She was chosen by Maori leaders and presented in a ceremony on Thursday before thousands gathered for Kiingi Tuheitia’s last rites, the Kiingitanga, the Maori royal movement, said in a statement.

In live footage of the ceremony broadcast by public broadcaster Radio New Zealand, she was seen sitting on an elaborately carved wooden throne next to her father’s coffin to cheers from the crowd, with some in attendance wiping tears from their eyes.

The king’s body was carried in procession to Mount Taupiri in the Waikato region of New Zealand’s North Island, where the Maori monarchs are buried.

Nga Wai Hono i te Po is the second woman to lead the Maori people, after her grandmother Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, who ruled for four decades from 1966. She is the second youngest Maori monarch and, according to Radio New Zealand, was a member of the Waitangi National Trust, where she represented the Maori people in managing this historic site.

In 2022, Nga Wai Hono i te Po travelled to London as her father’s representative to meet with then-Prince Charles. She said at the time she was torn about meeting royals from the country that had occupied and colonised her people’s land, but said she would share the stories of her ancestors and contribute to relations between Maori and the English people.

“I’m angry, but it’s only right that I’m angry,” she said, according to a short documentary of her visit to Maori. “I have a big mouth, so I have to be careful.”

Nearly one million New Zealanders are of Maori descent, about a fifth of the population, according to the 2023 census.

New Zealand’s current government, the most conservative in a generation, has abolished a health board for Maori since taking office last year and is pushing to abolish other policies that benefit this community, which has higher incarceration rates and poorer health outcomes compared to the general population.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who is currently on a trip to South Korea, welcomed the new queen in a social media post, saying she is “carrying on her father’s legacy.”