Where’s the rāhui for the murdered Māori children?

A few days ago, a rāhui was declared across the entire Nelson/Tasman coastline. It was triggered after one tragic death in floodwaters, a death that probably had no connection to local iwi. Still, the rāhui was imposed across hundreds of kilometres of coastline by Te Taiao and the Iwi Emergency Management Rōpū, which operates from inside the Nelson/Tasman Emergency Operations Centre.

The result? No swimming, no fishing, no shellfish gathering, and according to the Nelson City Council’s own website, no entering the water. This isn’t a suggestion. It is being presented as an expectation, if not an outright restriction, all enforced not by law, but by spiritual authority and cultural pressure.

What’s astounding is how quickly something like this can be imposed for a single death in nature. Yet when Māori children are murdered, and they are, in appalling and rising numbers, not a single rāhui is ever placed. Not on the homes where they died. Not on the streets they lived. Not on the communities that failed them.

Where is the rāhui for Catalya Tangimetua-Pepene? Where was the rāhui for Nia Glassie? Where was the rāhui for the dozens of Māori babies and tamariki killed in domestic violence, gang disputes, or simply neglected to death?

We are constantly told that rāhui are about mourning, respect, healing and reflection. That only seems to apply when it is convenient, when a death fits the preferred narrative or is a politically safe moment to display tikanga. When Rangi drinks a box of Cody’s, gets behind the wheel and mows down an innocent person, there is no rāhui on the road. When a patched gang member shoots another man in front of his kids, there is no rāhui on that street. When a mother beats her child into a coma and leaves them to die, there is no spiritual closure for the land beneath that home.

This selective silence is deafening. It exposes the performance. A rāhui can stretch across a coastline for one flood-related death, yet nothing is done when a Māori child is buried in a tiny, quiet funeral after suffering years of abuse.

Tikanga, we are told, is about balance, manaakitanga, protection. Where is that same energy when Māori are the ones doing the killing? Or does tikanga conveniently retreat when the mirror is too ugly to face?

The truth is, the use of rāhui has become political. It is deployed when it suits public image, ignored when it demands accountability from within. It is easy to place a rāhui on a beach. It is much harder to place one on a community that has failed its children.

That tells you everything

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