For two years, Edwards’ children have grieved the loss of their matriarch - the “four-foot-ten giant”, they called her.
“She helped other people all of the time,” said Edwards’ daughter La Dene Edwards-Neumayer.
“She was a JP. She worked in the community courts. She was a wonderful woman. She cannot be left with all that bad energy down there, all that nastiness.”
After Edwards died, she was brought home to Putiki Marae in Whanganui, after a funeral service in Hastings, where she lived.
It was her wish to be buried at the urupā there with her three brothers, Rukuwai, Rangi and Wetini Chanel Te Weri, who were murdered when they were children in 1944.
Edwards-Neumayer said that was agreed. Fifteen months before Edwards’ death, during a visit to the urupā, she had made clear where she wanted to be buried.
Little notice
But, just hours before the burial in early April 2021, things changed. A distant relative from the Te Weri side of the family, with links to the marae, said Edwards would not be buried with her brothers - and instead, she was laid to rest elsewhere at the urupā.
“Mum was to be buried at 11. I would say about 9am on that morning, we were told that she was no longer to be buried in the agreed burial plot,” Edwards-Neumayer said.
“I was shown a picture on a phone: ‘This is where your mother’s going to be buried now. And if you don’t like it, you can do it yourself.’ That’s how it was presented.”
Edwards’ children - Edwards-Neumayer, her sister Montina Edwards and brother Tracy Edwards - did not like it, but said at the time they were grieving and in shock, so the burial went ahead.
It was traumatic due to how they were treated by the gravediggers, they said.
“One of [the] crew started literally chucking clods of earth at his boss and saying stuff like, ‘F*****, nearly got you’, or similar. They were actually clowning around in our mother’s grave whilst we were beside her grave saying our last goodbyes,” Edwards-Neumayer said.
The family were stunned.
“My sister finally had enough and tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘This isn’t a party, please show some reverence and respect to our mother’.
“His body language tensed and he became very aggressive and started muttering obscenities like, ‘F*** this, I’m I out of here’, and throwing rakes and shovels around.”
The Edwards whānau wrote a formal complaint to the custodian of Putiki Urupā about this behaviour and, in May 2021, applied for a disinterment licence, citing mental anguish and burial in the wrong plot.
Putiki Marae told RNZ it had no authority over the urupā.
As the landowner and caretaker of Putiki Urupā, Anglican church organisation Te Pihopatanga o Aotearoa Trust Board has to sign off on the disinterment from one grave to the one placing Edwards with her brothers.
But it did not sign - and still has not.
In an email, general manager of the board Maui Tangohau told RNZ the officer considered the matter as one best resolved by the wider whānau, and the board had no further comment.
Edwards’ children have met with the marae and trust board, but there’s still no resolution - and they dismissed as a “whitewash” a trust board report produced in November 2021 that wrongly called their mother Millie, rather than Mihi, and cited tikanga as a reason not to disinter.
The report also found it was unusual for whānau to decide where someone is buried - normally that was the job of a urupā guardian, it said.
“While Millie [sic] was alive, her and La Dene were given an indication of the burial location by the urupā kōmiti [committee] rep - ‘as close as possible’ to the preferred location where her three murdered brothers are buried - and the current burial location, I am advised, is proximate to that preferred location,” Tama Potaka, a trust board member, said in the report.
Edwards’ children said close enough wasn’t good enough, as it wasn’t what their mother wanted.
Tikanga not in the way - expert
Speaking generally, tikanga expert Professor Sir Pou Temara said he could not see any cultural problems with disinterment.
“There are no tikanga attached to the ability to disinter.
“You will have to follow the local protocols about that, and I do know that in Whanganui they have their own protocols about disinterment. They do it at certain times.”
It was not uncommon, and the only thing that limited the ability of Māori to do so were Ministry of Health guidelines, Temara said.
“If a family is not satisfied as to where a person is interred they may disinter, based on the power and the depth of their feeling about the wrongful place of that burial.”
For Edwards’ family, such feelings run deep.
“People are running away and I don’t know really why. It’s not that hard - it’s only a signature we’re after,” Edwards-Neumayer said, referring to the signature the family needed from the urupā landowner for their disinterment application.
“And we compromised. We made concessions. We made a lot of commitments.
“We said we’d do it all ourselves. There was no cost to the marae or urupā - that we would cremate instead of bury because we wouldn’t have to disturb the boys’ grave.”
Edwards-Neumayer said that was a big concession, given their mother was a devout Mormon and it was her wish to be buried.
Unless a resolution was found, expensive court action might be the Edwards family’s only option, she said.
