The loss of Māori king will be felt particularly keenly this year, and much like Tuheitia’s own selection, his successor is not easy to predict.

It seems somewhat fitting that a thunderstorm rolled across Aotearoa yesterday, as Kīngi Tuheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII lay in Waikato Hospital, surrounded by family. The winds of Tāwhirimātea howled across the Tasman when, in the small hours of this morning, notice came that sent shockwaves across the motu. 

Te Tari o te Kīngitanga said the monarch died in hospital overnight, having recently undergone heart surgery. He was surrounded by his whānau with his wife, Makau Ariki, by his side. He was 69 and is survived by three children. 

But the timing, in this of all years, seems a particularly heavy blow. In his 18th year on the throne, Kīngi Tuheitia was at the vanguard of Māori reaction to the government’s policies around Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Only a week ago, in his annual koroneihana speech, he spoke of the need for kotahitanga.

“Our kotahitanga shouldn’t be focused on fighting against the government. Instead, we need to focus on getting in the waka and working together. Mana motuhake has room for everyone,” he said at a particularly charged time for Māori-Crown relations. 

Already on iwi pages and Facebook groups across the country, people are rallying and organising for their delegations to head to the carved gates of Tūrangawaewae. Over the coming days, they’ll pile into buses and make their way across the Waikato to the marae where the two rivers meet. 

If it is to be anything like his mother, Te Arikinui Te Atairangikaahu’s tangi in 2006, it will be a staggeringly huge event. Her death after a reign of 40 years, the longest of any Kīngitanga monarch, set off a week of mourning, with tens of thousands coming from around the country. Condolences and dignitaries came from near and far. 

On the final day, she was paddled down the Waikato River on a waka that settled on the shores beside the sacred Taupiri Maunga, carried across the old State Highway One, and then laid to rest in an unmarked grave alongside the previous monarchs. It’s where Tuheitia will lie too. 

But in these initial hours, it’s his people, Waikato-Tainui, who will first grieve with Tuheitia. He is expected to lie in state for five days at Tūrangawaewae Marae, with tens of thousands expected to come to pay their respects. The plans are still being worked out. As with any Māori tangi, there are things to settle, arrangements to make. This will be done on the marae by tikanga, and there will likely be hui that stretch well into the night. 

Then, the gates will open for people from all across the land. There will probably be a delegation from the Crown, the very institution the Kīngitanga was created to go toe-to-toe against. There will be dignitaries from across the Pacific and around the world; Tuheitia held mana around Te Moana Nui-a-Kiwa too, and often met with Indigenous leaders and ariki, rangatira-to-rangatira outside the sphere of colonial states.

There is a council, known as Tekau mā rua, who will meet too and discuss the Kīngitanga’s next steps. It was first established by Kīngi Tāwhiao in the 19th century, designed to emulate the 12 disciples of the Bible. Today, the group supports and gives insight to the Māori monarch on a whole range of matters from political to cultural. It consists of a group of tohunga and rangatira from various iwi, among them people like Che Wilson, Rikirangi Gage and Sir Pou Temara.

The Kīngitanga is not hereditary, so it is not necessarily the case that one of Tuheitia’s children will be named to succeed him. “It’s not a conquering monarchy,” Tuheitia’s chief of staff, Ngira Simmonds, told RNZ this morning. But there is a precedent. All of the previous seven monarchs have come from the same lineage, from the original Kīngi Pōtatau Te Wherowhero of Ngāti Mahuta.

Still, there will be kōrero and debate and discussion about who comes next. Tuheitia probably had preferences. There could be a surprise. After all, Tuheitia didn’t expect to be king. It was widely expected one of his siblings would be successor. He only found out he was to be next a few days before his mother died. 

Born in 1955, he grew up at Waahi Pā near Huntly, and was educated in Hamilton and at St Stephens College in Auckland. When he was 11 his koro, Korokii, died and his mother was made the Queen of the Kīngitanga movement. Despite this, he continued his schooling. He then worked a range of humble jobs: a farmhand, the meatworks. He joined the army, then helped build the Huntly Power Station. 

He was unexpectedly named the head of the Kīngitanga in 2006, taking over as the leader of the movement, the most enduring of all those created to defend Māori sovereignty during the devastating wave of war and confiscation in the 19th century. 

Tuheitia has long been afflicted by poor health. He’s battled cancer and diabetes, and he spent weeks in hospital a decade ago. Just four days ago, the Kīngitanga posted a video of Tuheitia in a quarter zip in the whare Māhinārangi, during a moment of karakia “in prayer to uplift and support our king as he focuses on his health.” But he always returned to mahi, attending the rigorous series of poukai and other events on the Māori calendar. 

But it was in the past year, during the outrage from Māoridom over the government’s Māori-related policies, that Tuheitia really stepped to the fore, taking on the leadership mantle as Māori expressed outrage over the perceived attack on the country’s founding document. After all, the preservation of mana motuhake is the very reason for the Kīngitanga’s existence. 

Late last year, he made the call for a hui-ā-motū, which tens of thousands heeded when they flooded into Ngāruawāhia, a clear example of the mana and influence the Kīngitanga still holds more than 160 years after it was founded. But much of that came down to the mana of Tuheitia himself, and the way he quietly carried himself. His voice was soft, his manner gentle, but that belied how formidable he really was. 

“The best protest right now is to be Māori”, he told those gathered. “Be who we are, live our values, speak our reo, care for our mokopuna, our awa, our maunga, just be Māori. Māori all day, every day, we are here, we are strong,” he said to applause. “We’re only interested in one version, te reo. There’s no principles, the treaty is written. That’s it.”

That continued with his visit to Waitangi – the first in many years; Ngāpuhi and the Kīngitanga famously aren’t historical allies – and the series of hui that have been arranged around the country in light of the government’s policies. But he was elsewhere too, just last month he was at the Olympics.

It’s not often the Pākehā media go to koroneihana, let alone the press gallery. But everyone gathered there a week ago to hear what would turn out to be his final public words. “Growing together is crucial. We’ve come a long way as a country, and we can go even further – let’s not give up now! Te Tiriti o Waitangi is between Māori and the Crown – mana to mana. The Treaty provides a foundation for us all to work together. Let’s not change it; that would harm us.

“Whakarongo mai – are you listening, Wellington? There is a better way.”

In a charming video posted two weeks ago, Tuheitia raised the ornate tekoteko he always carried to the camera, and guided his finger down its length. “On here I’ve got all my tūpuna,” he said. “This is my strength.”

He worked his way up from the base, through each of the carved figures along its length. From his grandfather, Korokī, to Te Tarata, with his top hat. Mahuta, then Tāwhiao, then Pōtatau. Then his hand reached the handle. 

“The handle is my mother. I’m always holding on to her.” They were all held together by a spine, the seven waka of te motu, holding up the Kīngitanga. “This has been my strength ever since [I was told] I had to carry this wherever I went.

“Whenever I’m holding this I know my mother’s with me, I know my tūpuna are with me.”

Aotearoa is so much poorer today for his passing. Waikato-Tainui will be in mourning. Taupiri maunga, standing guard over that swirling river beneath, is ready to let Tuheitia rest in its soil, alongside his mother and all that pantheon of tūpuna who fought for mana Māori motuhake for more than a century.