Ensuring rāhui is honoured a huge task for cultural advisor

Friday, 13 December 2019

The rahui on Whakaari/White Island offers respect to those who lost their lives and to their families.

Ensuring the rāhui around Whakaari/White Island is honoured is going to be a huge undertaking, Ngati Awa elder and cultural advisor Pouroto Ngaropo says.

This is because of the sheer vastness of the area the rāhui has been imposed. It will encompass the tribe's customary coastal boundaries spanning from Whakatāne, Ōhope and Ōhiwa coastlines, and Rurima, Moutohora and Te Puia ō Whakaari islands.

Neighbouring iwi, including Te Whakatōhea and Te Whānau a Apanui, also placed rāhui over their customary coastal areas after an eruption on Whakaari/White Island on Monday.

The eruption has left eight people dead so far. On Friday six of the eight bodies that remained on the island were recovered. Recovery teams were still working to locate the remaining two.

Whakaari/White Island cultural advisor Pouroto Ngaropo is tasked with ensuring the rahui is honoured.

* Recovery plan under way as volcanic ash threatens to entomb bodies on Whakaari/White Island

Monday's eruption has left eight people dead so far. A further eight people remain on the island, feared dead, with a recovery mission to retrieve them starting on Friday morning.

* Whakaari/White Island: Government turns down family request to retrieve body

* Whakaari: Bedlam at Whakatāne Hospital as worker describes eruption aftermath

* Multiple casualties, multiple victims: Man who flew last survivor off Whakaari/White Island speaks**

A NZDF helicopter arrives at Whakatāne airport on Friday morning as the recovery fof bodies from Whakaari/White Island begins.

However, more deaths are expected to die with 23 people still critical in hospitals around the country.

The deaths have had a huge impact on the region's 18 iwi and the Eastern Bay of Plenty was a huge area to make sure the tribes supported the rāhui, which they did, Ngaropo said.

Navy ship, HMNZS Wellington, has been brought in to help aid the recovery.

The imperatives around the rāhui started the moment lives were lost on the island, he said.

'If these imperatives were not carried out correctly, then in the spiritual domain, we aren't able to provide the portal for them to return to wherever they had come from spiritually.'

Ngāti Awa elder and spiritual advisor Pouroto Ngaropo raises questions about whether tourism on the island can continue.

The rāhui was temporarily lifted to accommodate the recovery operation from Whakaari on Friday.

A Ngāti Awa tohunga accompanied the recovery team to the island to conduct the necessary cultural imperatives and provide spiritual support to the recovery team.

A blessing was also held at sea with representatives of the families of the victims.

'I had to make sure that was put in place to protect the work that was going on to try and retrieve them to protect them also the distinguished dead, those eight others who we don't know of who are there that died on that island who could be dead in the ocean.'

That rāhui will stay in place until the bodies are uplifted, retrieved and returned, he said.

It was a prohibition that protected the area from spiritual impediments and prohibits acts in the area such as fishing, gathering seafood, swimming and boating in the area.

For local maori, Whakaari/White Island is an ancient ancestor who has been here since the beginning of time. Māori believed she came from the Central North Island where she is connected to all of the mountains on that island.

She journeyed with her sister, Moutohorā (Whale Island) from there to this area, he said.

'When they arrived, they found that the journey had made them quite cold. So Moutohorā went to the local forest here to get firewood, when she came back her sister Whakaari was so excited to be touching water she raced off and there she is out standing out there.

'Her sister came back and said, Hey where are you? She lit the wood and fire and threw it at her, and that created the geothermal fault line. That's our connection to her, she's an ancestor, she provides beauty, connectedness to the environment, and geothermal energy for all of us that live here.'