New resting place for warrior chief

More than 160 years after his death, Ngapuhi warrior chief Hone Heke has been on the move again - this time to a burial cave in a secluded area west of Kaikohe.
Descendant David Rankin shifted the bones before dawn yesterday from a cave near Pakaraka, where they were threatened by a residential housing development.
Mr Rankin collected the bones by torchlight around 4am, wrapped them in a shroud and a flax mat and laid them beside the grave of Heke's missionary friend Henry Williams at Pakaraka's historic Holy Trinity Church. There they were blessed by the Anglican Bishop of Tai Tokerau, Te Kitohi Pikaahu, then taken to another cave several kilometres west of Kaikohe.
The next step would be for all of Ngapuhi to decide where the chief should be laid to rest permanently.
Te Runanga-a-iwi o Ngapuhi had agreed to organise hui to debate the location, Mr Rankin said.
His personal preference was the cemetery in central Kaikohe or the top of Kaikohe Hill, where there was already a monument to the chief's namesake, Maori MP Hone Heke Ngapua.
In the meantime, Heke's descendants could rest easy knowing he was safe from septic tank seepage or accidental inference by children or animals.
After Heke died in 1850, Henry Williams promised the land where the chief had been buried would be kept secure and in his family's hands for perpetuity.
However, some of the land was sold in the 1980s and was now being developed. Two homes had been built less than 20m from the burial cave.
While the owners knew their properties backed on to a wahi tapu, they did not know Hone Heke's remains had been buried there.
Mr Rankin said moving ancestral remains was nothing unusual - yesterday's move was Heke's fifth.
The temporary burial cave near Kaikohe had been chosen because it was secure, secluded, already home to ancestral bones, and - crucially - surrounded by Maori land which could never be subdivided and sold.
Mr Rankin, who is chairman of the Hone Heke Foundation and a leader of the Maturahurahu hapu, said his ancestor was not Ngapuhi's only great warrior chief, but he was the one every New Zealander knew because he had chopped down Russell's flagpole.
He said Heke still captured people's imagination because he was "a charismatic trouble-maker and knew how to pull a great marketing stunt".
Ironically, Mr Rankin has himself been accused of pulling a stunt.
Kaikohe kaumatua Ron Wihongi told Radio New Zealand that Mr Rankin had no right to move Heke's remains without consulting others.
Yesterday's move appeared to be a stunt designed to lift his profile among Ngapuhi, Mr Wihongi said.
Ngapuhi kaumatua Kingi Taurua said Mr Rankin was "meddling" and should have consulted Ngati Kawa, who had mana-whenua in the area.
But Te Runanga-a-iwi o Ngapuhi chairman Raniera Tau said that as the senior line of whakapapa in Hone Heke's whanau, Mr Rankin had every right to move the bones.