When she was nine years old, Nga wai hono i te po’s father ascended to the throne. He became New Zealand’s Māori King and over the years, she watched as the role took its toll – and also witnessed what he meant to Indigenous people across the country.
Now, at just 27, it is her turn to lead. Nga wai hono i te po has become the Māori Queen at a pivotal time for relations between the government and Indigenous people of New Zealand.
She was anointed in a ceremony last week at the home of the Māori King movement – known as Kiingitanga – becoming its second youngest monarch. It came on the day her father, Tuheitia, was buried on Taupiri Mountain after being paddled down the Waikato River in a waka flotilla.
Nga wai hono i te po – whose titles are Te Arikinui (paramount chief) or Kuini (Queen) – has taken on a role for which she has been primed for several years, increasingly being seen along her father’s side at events, and even representing the Kiingitanga on trips abroad, including to Buckingham Palace in 2022.
The Queen is expected to connect with a younger, rapidly growing Māori population, while her fluency in Māori language and political awareness is predicted to increase the prominence of the Kiingitanga movement.
The movement is the most enduring of those created to defend Māori sovereignty during a wave of war and confiscation in the 19th century, an attempt to unite tribes to go toe-to-toe with the British Crown. While the role of monarch is largely ceremonial, the leader is also considered to be the paramount chief of several iwi (tribes). The movement has been influential in shaping the discourse around the coalition government’s policy direction for Māori.
Tom Roa, professor at the University of Waikato and a leader of Waikato Ngāti Maniapoto iwi says a strong monarch must have three characteristics: lineage, political acumen and an eye for the future.
“Te Arikinui Kuini Nga wai hono i te po has these qualities in spades,” he says.
There is a cohort of young Māori women, including the Queen, who are politically astute and are unafraid to assert self determination, Roa says.
“She has an expertise in her Māori language, in Māori customs – she’s a model of her father’s words: Māori, be Māori.”
At a time when tensions between Māori and the government are at their highest in a generation over policies that include rolling back official use of the Māori language (te reo Māori) and putting the principles of the country’s founding document to a referendum, Nga wai hono i te po’s appointment is being seen as a potent symbol of a new generation of Māori pushing back.
“No doubt [the role] will have its toll on her but she is resilient,” says Roa.
“Given time to mourn her father, that resilience will shine through.”
Born in June 1997, the youngest of three children of Tuheitia and Makau Ariki, Nga wai hono i te po is a direct descendant of all eight previous Māori monarchs. Her name, which loosely translates to ‘a connector of peoples’, was bestowed by her grandmother, the late Māori Queen Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu.
“I think the significance and the metaphors in her name and the fact that she is now our Queen are not lost on Māoridom,” Roa says.
She grew up around her family at Waahi Pā, in the North Island’s Waikato region, with te reo Māori as her first language. A member of what’s been dubbed the “kohanga reo generation”, she attended full immersion Māori schools and went on to gain a master’s degree in te reo and tikanga Māori from Waikato University.
Since then, she has been a member of several Māori organisations, including the Kōhanga Reo National Trust and the Waitangi National Trust. She will also continue as a patron of the national Māori performing arts competition Te Matatini.
Nga wai hono i te po has long been an active participant and tutor in kapa haka, the Māori performing arts, telling her university that she had lived and breathed it her whole life, and that it formed some of her earliest memories.
“I was practising all my pūkana (facial expressions) in front of a mirror … when my mother walked past behind me and just cracked up,” she recalled. “She said, ‘it’s probably going to be you one day.’”
In 2022, during a visit to London to meet with then-Prince Charles, Nga wai hono i te po spoke of her conflicted feelings about meeting the figurehead of the Crown.
“I feel angry,” she told a documentary in te reo Māori. “I have a loud mouth so I need to be careful.”
But that could prove useful after the past year, in which her father became an increasingly prominent figure in nationwide protests against the government’s policies. In January, tens of thousands heeded Tuheitia’s call for a rally to discuss a response, and another large meeting is due to be held in October, which the Kiingitanga is expected to attend.
In a post on social media, prime minister Christopher Luxon, who did not attend the coronation, said he welcomed the new Queen, “who carries forward the mantle of leadership left by her father.”
The Kiingitanga is not hereditary, with the monarch picked by a council of elders and experts known as Tekau mā rua (Māori for 12), made up of representatives from many tribes.
During the five day funeral of Tuheitia, they listened to the oratory, speeches and suggestions from around the country, and met to decide the next steps. Tekau mā rua chair Che Wilson told public broadcaster RNZ the new monarch would take some time to bed in.
“She still needs to mourn her father,” he said. “But there’s some momentum that her father has created for te iwi Māori.”
