Police have confirmed that the body found in Pukekohe last week is that of missing 25-year-old Te Anihana Pomana, bringing the three-month search to a close.
A post-mortem has been completed, and Te Anihana’s tūpāpaku was taken back to Dunedin by her whānau on Saturday afternoon.
Just days before the discovery of her body, Te Ao Māori News visited her whānau at their farm in Hindon, 20 kilometres outside Dunedin, the place where Te Anihana was raised by her mum, Catherine Anderson.
“Te Anihana, she’s born and raised here on the farm. Vibrant, energetic. She was always driven, and as a child, was always ready with a big smile. Ready to help anyone.
“Loved organising people and having things in order, saying, ‘No, you need to be doing this here,’ or organising school sports with her older siblings.”
Te Anihana was last seen in central Auckland in early August. After three months with no confirmed sightings, her whānau had become increasingly distressed.
Lack of footage
Catherine said one of their biggest concerns was the lack of CCTV footage collected by police that might have helped track her daughter’s movements.
“What we didn’t realise is police had never got any of the CCTV camera footage from the public.”
“We know Auckland is one of the most surveilled cities in the world, not just New Zealand, but in the world and yet a young girl goes missing and she looks like she is vulnerable, she looks like a child, she looks tiny, looks really young… I don’t know whether there’s been judgments made. I don’t know,” she said.
Her sister Ebony travelled from Dunedin to Auckland multiple times to help with the search. She said the family had long been worried about Te Anihana’s mental health and the struggles she faced trying to access support.
Days before she went missing, Te Anihana travelled to their marae in Kaeo in the Far North seeking a cultural and spiritual response to what she was experiencing.
“And that’s why she felt like they didn’t have the answers down here with psychiatrists who would just declare her as well, even though she was saying she was seeing things and hearing things like all around the dead.”
“She was trying to get kaumātua support for that. That’s why she went back up home. A lot of struggles around that for her,” she said.
Arai Te Uru Marae in Dunedin had been another home for the siblings - a pan-tribal space where many children grew up under the care of aunties, kaumātua and community.
One of the marae aunties, who is also a mental health practitioner, said Te Anihana was considered part of the marae whānau and “a child of everyone.”
She said the case exposed painful shortcomings in the systems meant to support people in crisis.
“A realisation that some of our friends work in that space. We work in those spaces too, and to see the systems that we are part of fail our own.
“Knowing that our friends and colleagues have been in those spaces, that the Māori mental health team and the voices of Māori clinicians, the mātauranga there wasn’t enough to really give a true, reflective cultural response, treatment, and care plan for her.”
For them, the discovery of her body does not end their search for understanding. It marks the beginning of a new chapter: one centred on accountability, healing and honouring the vibrant, determined young woman they raised in Hindon.
Details for her tangi are unconfirmed. A Givealittle page has been created to assist with transportation and funeral costs.
