Talk at tangi is about choices

Mairina's mother Queenie, centre wearing cloak, among mourners at the Hokianga cemetery. Picture / Phil Taylor

Mairina Dunn was given a loving farewell. Hundreds of whanau and friends visited her in Whangarei or in the northwest Hokianga at Waimirirangi marae in a landscape of sharp bush-clad hills, salty marshes and toitoi.

They came to grieve, to mourn and to pity.

Her family clung to the fact that so many came. Mairina's great-uncle, Jacob Dunn, nods at the crowd around the grave on Thursday and says he'd be well pleased to have half the number at his funeral.

"She didn't deserve to die that way, that's for bloody sure," says Dunn. It's a phrase often repeated during the tangi.

Police have said her death was the result of "violence on an unimaginable scale". Mairina Dunn died in the early hours of last Sunday, after a beating police say may have lasted as long as 90 minutes. She was 17.

Police are hunting Nathan Fenton, who they say is a patched member of Black Power. At 31, he is almost as old as Mairina's mother, Queenie. Mairina and Fenton had been in some sort of domestic relationship, but it lasted no more than a few weeks.

At the graveside, Mairina's mother, Queenie Mairina Dunn, stands silent, occasionally shaking her head, sometimes reaching for the hand of her surviving daughter, a 4-year-old named Waimirirangi, like the marae.

Queenie is draped in a majestic Maori cloak, a blue-striped beanie upon her head, a small ring through her nose.

Four spades lie atop a mound of fresh brown-red dirt. Mairina - whose tagger's nickname was Toe-toe - had a pure white casket. Young friends had been dissuaded from writing farewell messages on it.

Her grave is an arm's length from the fresh headstone of her grandmother, Regina "Chicken" Dunn, who died two years ago aged 50. An impressive white marble headstone was installed on Chicken's grave only a few months ago.

A friend says Queenie has struggled to cope with her mother's death and that the expensive headstone was her tribute. There is another now to save for.

"We wanted the young people to see," says Jacob Dunn, explaining the decision to have the casket open during the tangi for mourners to see Mairina's battered face. "It might save a few lives. I hope it opens up some of these girls' eyes about speaking up," he says from behind his sunglasses.

The tangi was to farewell Mairina but the subtext was about domestic violence, men hitting women. "We had some good speeches last night at the marae which were about choices," says Dunn, "trying to knock it in to some of these people, you know, that what they do reflects on them and on their family."

Ditto Joe Tewake, at the cemetery on the hilltop: "Let's hope we learn something from this because we are having trouble with our young people." Tewake's own kids talk about their friends who "go around converting cars" as though it's "cool".

Talk turns to absent fathers. Mairina's biological father is at the tangi but was not prominent in her life. It seems he had a short relationship with Queenie and that Mairina met him only a year ago.

Rookie Rahana introduces himself to the Weekend Herald as Mairina's stepfather. He moved in with Queenie and Chicken when Mairina was a toddler and lived at their Charles St house until their 14-year relationship ended a year ago. Rookie is the father of Waimirirangi.

He lives in west Auckland now and works for a furniture removal company. He's taken the week off work to hitch-hike to the tangi.

Rookie describes Mairina as "quite clever", though she didn't last long at high school. She liked playing pool and Xbox and was kind. To illustrate the last point, he relates how she once brought a street kid home to Charles St for them to feed.

According to family, Chicken was the rock in the lives of Queenie and Mairina. Charles St was Chicken's house and when she died it became Queenie's. It's in Kamo, across the main highway from the rugby ground where former All Black Ian Jones honed his skills.

The house is modest, tidy, proud, its chimney painted a cheerful shade of purple. In the yard is a set of kids' swings. The air smells of cut grass. The suburb is not posh but has a different atmosphere to the Whangarei suburb of Otangarei a few kilometres away where Mairina lived the last few weeks of her life.

The shops have roll-down security doors, there are car wrecks in front yards, boards covering broken windows, signs warning of resident dogs.

Sad little bouquets are jammed between palings of the dark-stained wooden fence.

Neighbourhood girls of about Mairina's age stop to chat. One has a tattoo across the top of her breast. They don't want to be named "just say two friends who love and miss her heaps, ake ake [forever and ever]".

They used to party with Mairina but don't know what hopes or dreams she might have had. What they do know is that she drank cardboard box wine because it was cheap, was "good at heart ... headstrong ... loud ... fun at a party [where she would] crack people up".

They also say she had changed after returning from military training in Christchurch. "She used to be always on the piss but she had mellowed out."

Once back in Otangarei it would have taken real resolve not to be absorbed back into a lifestyle that is poisonous to ambition. Mairina happened to meet Fenton, probably at a party.

I calculate that Chicken must have been no more than 18 when she had Queenie, that Queenie was probably younger still when she had Mairina, and I hope for the best for little Waimirirangi.