Taupiri maunga has served as a sacred burial site for hundreds of years, and will be the final resting place of Kīngi Tuheitia. Lyric Waiwiri-Smith looks at the history of the maunga on the day of the kīngi’s burial.
One of Taupiri maunga’s nearest neighbours is a motorway service centre dominated by McDonald’s and Taco Bell. It’s a place for commuters to stop during their travels to cool down with ice creams from the gas station in the summer, or a quick feed in the middle of a long trip. Many passing through probably won’t think much about the mountain looming in the background of the Waikato Expressway, but the service centre that bears its name provides respite all the same. In the shadow of Taupiri maunga, shades of healing can be found everywhere.
Taupiri, a rural settlement of 640 inhabitants just off the expressway, sees little traffic in the town centre, even by foot, on the average day, with its palmful of cafes and a Candyland factory-turned-pet-store. Today, the area will see its largest gathering in years when Kīngi Tuheitia is laid to rest on the mountain alongside the Māori monarchs who came before him.
The maunga holds major cultural significance for Waikato Tainui, including this reporter, and serves as a gravesite, or urupā, for many within the iwi. My hapū belongs to a separate marae with its own urupā, meaning a burial at Taupiri won’t be on the cards for me just because I belong to this iwi, but Taupiri is still our tupuna maunga. The maunga is an ancestor, an extension of our own existence forged by the bones of our tupuna buried there. Most mountains across Aotearoa are linked to iwi and hapū, which is why some have fought to have these landmarks returned to mana whenua, or to have their maunga’s personhood legally recognised.
On any other week, Taupiri maunga is as quiet as the residential street that acts as its entryway, where chickens peck and goats graze on overgrown grass. The beginning of the Taupiri urupā sits on flat land in front of the maunga, stretching up a few sides of the mountain. It has been regarded as a sacred site by Waikato Tainui since the murder of Ngāti Mahuta chief Te Putu in 1798, outside the pā he built on the maunga for his iwi.
Every Māori monarch since the first, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, has been buried at Taupiri maunga. Kīngi Tuheitia will be buried in an unmarked grave at the maunga’s summit, which has been a tradition of the Kīngitanga since the second Māori monarch, Kīngi Tāwhiao. He believed gravestones not to be necessary, as everyone should be equal in death. The exact site of the royal graves are known only by select members of Waikato Tainui and neighbouring iwi, and kept secret to the public. Though monarchs across the globe have grave sites open to the public – such as Queen Elizabeth II’s grave in St George’s Chapel, or Norway’s Royal Mausoleum – Taupiri maunga is not a sightseeing destination, but a sacred place.
The maunga has seen something of a facelift over the past week, with a 50-strong team assigned to landscaping tasks – widening existing footsteps, creating new footpaths, and a general clean-up of the grounds aided by the Department of Conservation – to ensure Taupiri is fit for a kīngi’s burial. A group regularly maintains the maunga, but for an occasion like this, extra hands from the youngsters from the local rugby league clubs are needed.
Huntly born-and-bred Luky, of Taniwharau Rugby League Club, was one of the younger guns who took on the task of preparing Taupiri maunga for the kīngi. Taupiri holds personal significance for Luky – his grandparents and great-grandparents are resting there, so taking time to care for the urupā comes not only as an honour to the kīngi, but to his whānau. “A lot of my whānau is up there, so usually when there’s a tangihanga around here, everyone knows that’s where the laying place is going to be,” Luky says. “It does hold huge importance for us … tikanga and ritual is a huge thing around here.”
The unique thing about Taupiri, he says, is the colour-splashed urupā that stretches partially up the maunga, where benches wait for tired legs. “By the time you get up there, you need a little break from huffing and puffing. A lot of whānau have benches made up for our older ones, and the way they do up Taupiri is awesome,” Luky says. “The people who keep it clean, the amount of mahi they do, it’s a lot of maintaining and hard work to keep the place the way it is, and they do it out of love for their family and the Kīngitanga. If you go up there, it’s the most hard-headed, down-to-Earth people. They don’t like being praised.”
Luky isn’t overstating – the Taupiri urupā is a splash of colour on the side of the mighty green, with dozens of wind spinners, plastic flowers and items of affection dotted around the grounds. Some tombstones are personalised, either with photos or branding, such as Ford or Louis Vuitton. One grave, where a father and son are buried together, has a “works end” road sign scribbled with goodbyes. On the grave of another father rests a mug that must have been his favourite: “Dad You Rock”. Some buried here died in their old age, while one was as young as a day old.
Before he arrives at Taupiri, Kīngi Tuheitia’s body will be transported down the Waikato awa, which shares a stretch of its bank with Tūrangawaewae marae. A fleet of four waka will travel alongside a flower-covered barge carrying the kīngi’s body downriver to Taupiri. Just as the maunga serves as an ancestor, so does the river.
On Wednesday, final touches were being made to Tuheitia’s float and its surroundings: flower pots were lined up alongside the barge and branches woven together to create greenery for the bridgeway, while the waka fleet attracted admirers along the bank. From today until eternity, Kīngi Tuheitia will rest alongside his mother Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, and the Māori monarchs of times past. In life, the kīngi was a truck driver turned reluctant leader, who in his last year on Earth drew an estimated 10,000 people, cross-iwi and cross-country, to Tūrangawaewae marae to hold the government to account on Māori issues. In death, he joins his people and ancestors as an equal.