Exhumation case: 'I feel like Dad is in the right place'

Tuhaka Pooley lost his beloved Dad in 2011.

As a nine-year-old boy, Tuhaka Pooley lost his beloved Dad.

For the past four years, he has regularly visited Jamie Robert Pooley's grave. He lays flowers, tidies the grave, tells of his latest rugby league heroics, and how he dreams to follow in the former under-18 Kiwi league player's sidesteps.

Tuhaka Pooley at his father's grave.

"Even though my Dad isn't here, I still think about him a lot and wish he was here to see me do things in my life."

But now, 13-year old Tuhaka has been dragged in to a court battle over his dead father's body.

Mr Pooley's partner Cheyenne Rana Biddle has launched legal action to dig up father-of-three Mr Pooley from his family plot at Memorial Park Cemetery in Christchurch and have him cremated.

Ms Biddle - mother of Mr Pooley's two youngest children - claims that is what he always wanted.

The Pooley family is fighting the move.

And young Tuhaka also wants his father left where he was buried in May 2011.

"I just don't want him to go anywhere else," the St Thomas of Canterbury College pupil told NZME News Service this week.

"I feel like Dad is in the right place because he is Maori and he is in a Maori cemetery and it is peaceful there. I can't imagine him being anywhere else."

Jamie Robert Pooley. Photo / Supplied

The legal battle is being fought at Christchurch's High Court.

While the two parties are working to a reach a compromise on other issues - including when Mr Pooley's Maori weapons, including two taiaha and a tewhatewha should be given to his sons - the delicate issue of exhumation appears destined to be settled by a judge early next year.

"Neither party is willing to back down," a source close to the matter told NZME News Service this week.

The Pooley family's main argument against exhumation - which has legal precedent in New Zealand - is that Mr Pooley's "very tapu" body has laid in rest for more than four years.

Tuhaka Pooley and his father Jamie Pooley.

Tuhaka's mother, Mr Pooley's former partner Charmaine Shaw, 33, said the legal process had caused "a lot of unnecessary burden, stress, hurt and anger" for both her family, and the Pooleys.

"Ultimately, I am angry it took so long to come out," said Ms Shaw.

"Had it been brought up at the time of death then we could have worked through this as a wider whanau.

"We have been living what feels like a nightmare."

Mr Pooley was a "staunch Maori fulla", she said, who was respected Maori culture.

"It feels right that he was laid to rest in the ground to return to his tipuna which is where I feel he is - with his ancestors," said Ms Shaw.

Her son Tuhaka feels both anger and stress over the court battle.

"It hurts me to see my family upset," he said.

"If he got cremated, I would really hate that."