Hura kōhatu: the Māori headstone unveiling

A hura kōhatu is the Māori headstone unveiling: the gathering at the graveside, usually about a year after the tangihanga ‘funeral’, at which the new headstone is uncovered for the first time. The name says exactly that: hura ‘to remove a covering, uncover’ and kōhatu ‘stone’. Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, calls the unveiling a very important ritual for Māori, and says it took the place of an older ceremony, the lifting and reburial of the bones. This guide explains the words, when an unveiling is held and why, what the records show happening on the day, the other ceremonies that follow a death, and what to do if you are invited.

Updated 23 October 2026 · 8 min read

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What hura kōhatu means

Both words are in Te Aka Māori Dictionary, and so is the phrase:

Māori	Meaning (Te Aka)
hura	to remove (a covering), uncover, expose, unveil; also to show cards
kōhatu	stone, rock; also spelt kōwhatu
hura kōhatu	unveiling: a ceremony at the graveside to unveil the headstone
huranga	removal of a covering, uncovering, unveiling: the noun made from hura

So a hura kōhatu is, word for word, uncovering the stone. You will also meet huranga kōhatu, made with the noun huranga. Te Aka’s example of it is a sentence about exactly this occasion:

Māori (Te Aka’s example)	Te Aka’s translation
Mō te wā tēnei e haere atu ai te whānau me te iwi ki te urupā ki te huranga kōhatu.	This is for the time when the family and the tribe go to the cemetery to a headstone unveiling.
Nō te marama o Ākuhata 1920 te hura kōhatu whakamaharatanga a te iwi me te kāwanatanga.	In August 1920 the memorial of the people and the government was unveiled.

The second example shows that the phrase is not only used at a family grave: in Te Aka’s 1920 sentence it is the unveiling of a public memorial. Te Aka’s word for a memorial stone is kōwhatu whakamaharatanga, from whakamaharatanga ‘memorial, commemoration’. In English, families and newspapers simply say the unveiling.

When is a hura kōhatu held?

Usually about a year after the death, but not always on the anniversary, and sometimes later. This is what the sources say:

Source	What it says
Te Ara, “Tangihanga – death customs” (Rawinia Higgins)	The hura kōhatu is held usually a year after the tangi.
Te Ara, “Death and dying” (Ruth McManus and Rosemary Du Plessis)	For Māori, the unveiling of a memorial headstone a year after a death is a very important ritual.
Te Puni Kōkiri’s magazine, 2014	Sir Wira Gardiner, writing the biography of Parekura Horomia, promised the book before the hura kōhatu, which, he said, gave him a year to 18 months.
A Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune notice, 1998	One year after a death, the family announced that the unveiling would be held the following year instead, “due to family reasons”.

The date is set by the family, and it is not always the anniversary: most of the unveiling notices in the Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank’s archive name a Saturday. Te Ara’s story of Ngāi Tūhoe names the unveiling of memorial stones, beside tangihanga, birthdays and weddings, among the occasions that bring people home to the tribal homeland.

Why a year: from hahunga to hura kōhatu

Te Ara explains that the unveiling replaced an older ceremony. Traditionally the body was buried in a shallow grave or placed in a secret place such as a cave or a tree. After a time a tohunga ‘expert, priest’ returned to collect the bones for the hahunga ‘ceremony for uplifting the bones’. The bones were washed, scraped and painted with red ochre, brought back to the marae and mourned over again, much as at a tangihanga, and then laid in their final resting place in secret, so that enemies could not find them.

Te Ara says plainly that the traditional process of exhuming and reinterring the bones has been replaced by the hura kōhatu. Its story of Māori feasts adds that a hākari ‘feast’ was important at a hahunga, and, as the next section shows, the unveiling still ends with one.

What happens at a Māori unveiling

No published guide sets out one programme for every unveiling, and Te Ara’s advice for any marae occasion is that every marae has its own protocols, so ask the local people. What follows is what the public record shows: unveiling notices placed by families, a radio recording of one unveiling, photographs of another, and a recent news report. Together they show a common shape:

A notice and an open invitation. Families announce the unveiling in the newspaper, giving the date, the time and the place. The wording is an open invitation, “family and friends are invited to the unveiling of Mum’s headstone”, often closing with Nau mai, haere mai ‘welcome’.
A welcome on the marae. Many notices begin the day with a pōwhiri ‘welcome ceremony’ at a marae, at ten or eleven in the morning. How a welcome runs is explained in what happens at a pōwhiri. Other notices go straight to the cemetery.
A service. One notice speaks of “a service to unveil and bless the headstones”; others hold the service at the marae, at the house or at the graveside. The catalogue entry for RNZ’s recording of an unveiling at Purewa Cemetery in Auckland in 1994 lists a hīmene ‘hymn’, a blessing by the bishop, prayers, and poroporoaki ‘farewell speeches’. Ans Westra’s photographs of a Ringatū gathering and unveiling at Ruatoki North in 1972 show people gathered around the graves in the urupā ‘cemetery’.
The stone is uncovered. This is the moment the ceremony is named for: until then the new headstone is covered, and the covering is removed.
Washing hands on the way out. Te Ara says that most urupā have water at the entrance, and that people wash their hands as they leave to remove tapu ‘sacredness, restriction’. The Ruatoki photographs show people washing their hands at a tap and a table, which the National Library’s catalogue records as being done to whakanoa ‘remove tapu’.
The hākari. Many notices end the day with a feast, back at the marae or in a hall: one notice reads “Powhiri at the Marae, followed by the service at the Urupa and Hakari back at the Marae”, and an RNZ report from December 2025 describes an unveiling at a Napier cemetery at 1pm with a hākari at a local marae afterwards. Te Ara records a whānau unveiling at Kawiti in Northland in 1945 to which 500 people came, fed with, among much else, two beef cattle, four pigs and a thousand eels.

Several stones on one day

One unveiling can honour more than one person. Notices in the archive invite people to “the unveilings of our family” for four relatives at once, to the unveiling of a grandmother and her great-granddaughter together, and to a service for three headstones.

Speeches

The farewell speeches recorded at the 1994 Purewa unveiling are catalogued as poroporoaki, the same word as for the farewells at a tangihanga. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography records leaders speaking at unveilings: Maata Te Reo Hura, later president of the Rātana Church, was a speaker at the unveiling of a monument to her father in 1944. How a farewell is addressed, and what moe mai rā means, are explained in condolences in Māori and poroporoaki, and are not repeated here.

The other ceremonies after a death

The unveiling is the last of several ceremonies that follow a tangihanga. What happens at the tangihanga itself is in the condolences guide; these are the ones that come after the burial, as Te Ara and Te Aka describe them:

Ceremony	Word for word	What it is
takahi whare	tramp (the) house	After the burial, a minister or tohunga walks through the house of the person who has died, reciting karakia ‘prayers, chants’, to lift the tapu from the house and the person’s belongings.
kawe mate	carry (the) dead	Relatives take the memory of the person to the marae of people who could not come to the tangihanga, often at that community’s request. A photograph, often held by one of the women at the front of the group, stands for the person, and is placed on the porch of the meeting house during the welcome.
hura kōhatu	uncover (the) stone	Usually about a year after the tangi, the headstone is unveiled at the graveside.

Te Ara illustrates the kawe mate with a photograph of the one held for Te Ātairangikaahu, the Māori Queen: members of the Royal New Zealand Navy lead the group onto the marae, and behind them is her son, Kīngi Tūheitia, beside his mother’s photograph. Who she was is in the Māori kings and queens. The parts of the marae named here, the porch, the meeting house and the urupā, are explained in the parts of a marae.

If you are invited to an unveiling

An unveiling notice in the paper is an invitation to everyone who knew the person, not only to relatives. None of the sources checked sets out etiquette written for unveilings in particular, so this is what can be said from them:

Be on time, and come for the start. If the day begins with a pōwhiri, Te Ara’s marae etiquette applies: arrive early, wait to be welcomed on, and do not walk onto the marae once the welcome has begun.
On a marae, the marae’s customs apply. Te Ara’s guidance is to dress formally for a tangihanga, to give a koha ‘gift, contribution’ to the elders in an envelope, to keep phones off during the welcome, and to ask before taking photographs, since some marae do not allow them.
Wash your hands as you leave the urupā. Water is provided; Te Ara gives this as part of marae etiquette at any tangihanga.
Stay for the hākari. Te Ara’s story of feasts explains that how well visitors are fed is the measure of hospitality, and that elders and respected guests are called in first.
What to say to the family is the same as at any time of loss: Aroha nui ki a koutou ‘much love to you all’. The condolences guide has short messages, and the warning about which farewells belong to the living and which to the dead.

Words you will hear at an unveiling

Māori	English (Te Aka)
hura kōhatu	headstone unveiling
huranga kōhatu	headstone unveiling (with the noun huranga)
urupā	burial ground, cemetery, graveyard
rua tūpāpaku	grave, burial place
kōwhatu whakamaharatanga	memorial stone
whānau pani	chief mourners, the bereaved family
karakia	prayer, chant; to pray
hīmene	hymn; to sing hymns
poroporoaki	farewell speeches to the dead
whakanoa	to remove tapu
hākari	feast
kawe mate	the mourning visit to another marae after the burial

Te Aka’s example for rua tūpāpaku is one you may see in a tribute: Ko te whānau pani e horopaki ana i te rua tūpāpaku. ‘The bereaved family surrounded the grave.’

Going further

Words like whānau and aroha are early lessons in our own free te reo Māori course, voiced by Papa Reo’s native-speaker voice. For the occasions where you will hear them most, see karakia for meetings and Māori greetings and sign-offs.