Rest quietly, our tupuna

The return of tupuna to the Wairau Bar in Marlborough has been an eye-opener for reporter Claire Connell. She recounts three days spent with Rangitane as they rebury their own.

The forecast rain holds off all day as about 300 Rangitane iwi members and guests go by boat to the barren site on the outskirts of Blenheim and establish their place in history.

Elderly kuia, small children and men and women, young and old, trek along the barren landscape as they accompany the caskets to their final resting place.

It is silent apart from their grief and the howling wind.

I watch as one older woman struggles to get off a barge (the Wairau Bar is boat access only).

She has a walking stick, and I wonder whether she can make the long distance to the other side of the site, where the burial site is. But she refuses assistance and carries on. She has been waiting probably her whole life for this to happen and is less than a kilometre away. She is not giving up now.

There is something about the landscape of the Wairau Bar that is hard to describe.

The horizon seems endless, the grass is dry, and the occasional horse roams free on the land.

You feel as if you are in another world, but it is only a short few minutes from the mainland, and then a 10-minute drive from central Blenheim.

To see this group from a distance walking across the Bar is something that will stick in my mind forever. The misty hills in the background are covered in low cloud, and the group, with a powerful sense of urgency but calmness too, is making its way to the opposite side of the Bar.

Rangitane development manager Richard Bradley tells the group the event is about reconnecting with their identity, and that everyone on the site that day has a responsibility to make sure the remains are never moved again.

"What you are witnessing today is one generation making sure they know where they came from, and that's a cool thing.

"The reason we know who we are is because we know who these people are," he says, gesturing at the caskets.

He later says the iwi have waited for so many years that he never expected to see it in his own lifetime.

For this, he is grateful.

The iwi had been telling me there is an old saying: "The sun always shines on the Wairau Bar".

Fair enough during summer, but this time I am less convinced and am quite sceptical as I look up and see dark, threatening clouds swirling overhead.

But, true to the word, once the final casket is being buried, a circle of blue sky forms.

Sunlight streams down on the fifth grave site, making tears glisten and people smile. Special things happen at the Wairau Bar.

"See," one iwi member tells me, "the sun always shines on the Wairau Bar it doesn't matter what the weather, the sun will always shine, and that's a good sign."

When the 100-strong Rangitane iwi group entered Canterbury Museum two days before, it was an experience like no other. Constricted to the narrow, dimly lit passageways of the museum, seven Rangitane men led the group and made their way through to the small corner in the museum display area where the caskets lay.

There was complete silence, apart from the protective noises from the seven men performing the guard of honour challenge ritual at the front of the group.

With the intensity on their faces and the power in their calls, they were oblivious to the hundreds watching them.

The women were crying from the heart. Their soft singing was like a whispering backdrop that floated through everyone.

Elders and young children alike wept over family members they had never met, but always knew existed.

The fresh tears of the iwi were as real as if these ancestors had died only a month ago ... they had seen their people at last.

The group rushed to the caskets and mourned. They cried. They held each other. They stroked the Rangitane leaf cloaks that rested on the coffins. A ceremony then took place to bless the caskets and to farewell them from Canterbury Museum and welcome them into Rangitane's custody.

Rangitane men spoke in fluent te reo Maori, gesturing and pointing at the caskets.

I understood from the tone and authority of their voices, and the wavering of emotion in their words, that the hurt of the past was still raw.

One young woman, no older than 15 and dressed in black, sat by the coffins on the carpet. Her female relative was weeping nearby. The young girl moved closer and held her hand, then they both sat together, holding each other and crying. It was as if no-one else was in the room.

Iwi spoken to after the ceremony were lost for words. The ceremony had taken energy out of everyone, and they were exhausted. They were emotionally drained.

"I was in a different world," said Rangitane's Jeffrey Hynes.

"When we came through those doors, it sent a shiver up my spine.

"It is hard not to get emotionally driven in a setting like that."

These sentiments were echoed by 54- year-old Peter Williams, who had travelled from Levin with his wife and daughter for the repatriation.

"The experience has just been overwhelming. We just thought we were doing something right, but by God, when I got into the museum I couldn't help but get emotional ... the charge, you know.

"Even I cried because I just felt a strong spirit was there.

"You know how everybody would like to be rested with respect? That's what we were doing making sure they were brought home to rest with dignity.

"Every feeling and emotion is being visited. It is uplifting. It makes me proud to be who I am."

The reburying of the tupuna signifies a change in society's views. Seventy years ago, it was acceptable to some Pakeha to excavate the site they were in a different era and it was the norm.

But in 2009, attitudes have changed. Anyone witnessing the ceremonies either at Canterbury Museum or the Wairau Bar would be left with no doubt that returning these ancestors to their original gravesites was the right thing to do.

A senior curator of anthropology at Canterbury Museum, Roger Fyfe, said the museum ceremony had exceeded everything he had expected.

"We are very, very happy. Things got off to a scratchy start, but they have worked out well."

He said that day was not the end for the relationship between Rangitane and the museum. He hoped the success of this project would continue in the future.

After the reburial, Canterbury Museum director Anthony Wright apologised to Rangitane at a ceremony at Omaka Marae for removing the remains.

"I recognise that things have happened in the past [that] would not happen today," he says, expressing a view to move forward in the future, a view shared by iwi too.

Richard Andrell, of Picton, speaks of a sentiment that seems to echo through the three days at various points.

"You kind of wonder, how could they take them?

"They thought it was right at the time. We see differently now."

- The Marlborough Express