Great voyager’s last journey
Hundreds bid farewell to inspirational waka navigator known fondly as Sir Hek
The great navigator and waka builder Sir Hekenukumai Busby has embarked on his final voyage. One of Northland’s most influential leaders, the man known as Sir Hek, who died on Saturday aged 86, is credited with almost single-handedly reviving ancient Maori traditions of ocean voyaging.
His feats of sailing around the Pacific on waka hourua (doublehulled ocean-going canoes) and navigating only by stars, currents and birds put to rest long-held myths that Maori had arrived in New Zealand by accident rather than by design.
Thousands of people gathered at Te Uri O Hina Marae near Kaitaia, during his four-day tangihanga with more than 500 attending karakia whakamutunga (final prayers) before
he was laid to rest at nearby Te Rangihaukaha Urupa.
Mourners included Ministers Shane Jones and Kelvin Davis, Tu wharetoa paramount chief Tumu Te Heuheu, and delegations from the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii and the group entrusted with one of Sir Hek’s waka in the Dutch city of Leiden.
Hawaiian navigator Nainoa Thompson, whose arrival in New Zealand in 1985 on the traditional waka Hokole’a, sparked Sir Hek’s passion for ocean voyaging, also attended.
Thompson spoke of Sir Hek’s courage in striving to achieve the seemingly impossible, at a time when traditional Polynesian voyaging was “standing on the cliff of extinction”.
To honour a man who had changed many lives, he had named a star after him in a constellation shaped like a fish hook.
“He is with us forever,” Thompson said.
Other speakers recalled his favourite expressions and fondness for electronic devices, noted his skill in kapa haka, and talked about his love for his mokopuna and especially his wife Hilda, who was “the wind to his sail”.
After a rousing haka Sir Hek’s casket was to have been placed on one of his first waka, Te Ika-a-Maui or Mokopuna, and towed to his final resting place at Te Rangihaukaha Urupa on a nearby hilltop.
However, members of the haukainga (home people) wanted his casket carried up the hill instead.
Mourners were there greeted by another powerful haka, this time by students from Far North schools.
Sir Hek was buried with his beloved Hilda, who died 23 years earlier.
Heiswithus forever.
Nainoa Thompson, Hawaiian navigator talking about Sir Hek (above)