Long Live The Queen
Last week in Aotearoa New Zealand something incredibly special happened.
A new queen was crowned.
Nga wai hono i te po, 27 year old daughter of King Tūheitia, was chosen to replace her father, who passed away on 30 August. This was not an automatic passing down of the crown but a selection by a council of 12.
My heart sings for this. A 27 year old queen. A well-educated, well-travelled queen, steeped in tikanga | custom, for whom te reo Māori is her first language.
For overseas readers, a little history - the Kīngitanga | Māori King Movement began in the 1850s in an effort to resist the colonisation of New Zealand, halt the sale of Māori land, and to create a monarch like Queen Victoria who could create unity among iwi | tribes and put Māori on equal footing with Pākehā | Europeans.
The colonial government were alarmed by this alternative to their power and launched an invasion in 1863 which drove the movement into a wild hinterland now known as the King Country. This is the area in which we live. The wild is still here, and people's memories are sharp and angry.
While the Kīngitanga movement never encompassed the whole of Maoridom, it has grown in mana | prestige and the grandmother of the new queen, Dame Te Atairangikaahu, was a hugely loved figure.
When I was 21 I waitressed at the Museum Cafe in Hamilton, and I had the privilege of clearing the plates of Dame Te Atairangikaahu when she was the Māori Queen. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who wore such mana so lightly, like a cloak of feathers that cascaded about her. I wrote about this in February: "I remember the power of her smile when she glanced up at me; it was full of such warmth and kindness that I stood still in heart-shock for a moment, amazed at the light pouring out of one person. 25 years later, I can feel that light still."
Kuini | Queen Nga wai hono i te po joins the ranks of other outstanding young women rising in New Zealand - Chloe Swarbrick, the courageous and eloquent Green Party leader, and the inspiring Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who at 21, is New Zealand's youngest member of parliament since 1853.
Their rise stands in welcome opposition to the dismal headlines being generated by the regressive coalition government that arrived last year and immediately set about insulting Māori, dismantling health systems, pulling the rug out from under the disabled community, ripping up education plans, freezing building projects, insulting local councils, rolling back smoke-free legislation, ignoring climate change, opening up mining, seemingly adopting the playbook of rightwing Australian lobbying firm Crosby Textor and picking up ideas from Steve Bannon - flood the floor with shit - leaving many of us muttering about a one-term government. The last government was not perfect but we deserve better than this.
But enough about those bad eggs.
Let us celebrate a new dawn.
A wahine toa | brave warrior woman has arrived.
The future is bright.
Long Live The Queen.
Taupiri Mountain
When I was young and the road to Auckland took forever, we would drive past Taupiri Mountain. My father told us that Māori chiefs were buried there, the higher up, the more important they were. On every trip north, we could crane our necks to see the sacred mountain.