New Zealand's Maori Once Again Have a Queen

They came in their thousands in the freezing dawn, parking cars far away and winding down rural roads on foot, children riding on their shoulders. They arrived in mourning black with crowns of ferns and kawakawa leaves, bone carvings or wedges of deep green pounamu—New Zealand jade—resting on their chests. The mourners came to the North Island town of Ngaruawahia on Thursday to pay final respects to New Zealand's Maori king, Tuheitia Potatau Te Wherowhero VII, who died six days earlier, and witness the ascension to the throne of his daughter, Nga wai hono i te po. The new queen, 27, is the second woman to become Maori monarch in a tradition dating back to 1858, the AP reports.

As she was escorted onto Turangawaewae marae—an ancestral meeting place—where her father's casket lay draped in feathered cloaks, cheers rang out among thousands crowded around TV screens outside and waiting along the wide, flat banks of the Waikato River to glimpse Kingi Tuheitia's funeral procession. After her ascension, Nga wai hono i te po accompanied the late king in a flotilla of traditional canoes along the river as he was guided by Maori warriors to his final resting place. The events marked the end of a weeklong tangihanga—funeral rite—for Kingi Tuheitia, 69, a leader who had in recent months rallied New Zealand's Indigenous people to unity in the face of a more racially divisive political culture than before. His daughter's ascension represents the rise of a new generation of Maori leaders in New Zealand—one which grew up steeped in a resurging language that had once almost died out.

The late king, a truck driver before he took the throne, was a surprise appointment to the monarchy, which is chosen by a council and is not required to be hereditary. But the new queen was groomed for the role and had accompanied her father in his work during recent years. Tuheitia became king after his mother's death in 2006 and on Thursday was buried alongside her in an unmarked grave on Taupiri Maunga, a mountain of spiritual significance to his iwi, or tribe. The Kingitanga, or Maori royalty movement, is not a constitutional monarchy and King Charles III of Britain is New Zealand's head of state. It has a ceremonial mandate rather than a legal one. (But the AP has much more on how and why Tuheitia's "voice had become louder in recent months.")