Tēnei te tangata

It's a public holiday here today in Ōtautahi and I already had plans to sit down at some point, possibly as a way of avoiding vacuuming, and write something because, as has become typical, there's a bit going on. This was necessarily solidified by the fact that I somehow got added to a Māori Writers starter pack on BlueSky and I suddenly got a bunch of followers who probably have the expectation that I, I dunno, write things? Fuck¹, better do that then.

I will watch this haka another 50 times and no one can stop me

I was probably going to write something about hope and despair and protest and I still am (in a way) but with a radically different energy because Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and her Te Pāti Māori colleagues in only a couple of minutes blew a hole right through my "tired but persistent" vibe².

As I scrolled through social media last night and again this morning, occasionally I'd stop and say "shall I watch again? I'll watch it again for a little treat". It's non-fattening, soul-strengthening, but possibly addictive viewing. I love everything about it, but especially how much Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke stands in her own power.

Haka: Making people cry since before colonisation

And I'm not alone. On the BlueSky Kikorangi feed³ I saw dozens of people from all over the world, and a lot from the US, react to it with awe and emotion. And more than that, like a shot in the arm to show what resistance to colonisers can look like. That being "reasonable" and "civil" (for very specific meanings of those particular words) is not the only way.

How often do you see unfiltered righteous indigenous woman rage get an audience? It should be every day. There's enough of it that it could be every second of every day from now to the heat death of the universe. We may not have enough doctors, fully operative ferries, or hospitals but pai kare, we've got no shortages in the indigenous rage department.

I did start to wonder though, seeing so many people who didn't have any connection with Māori culture or New Zealand saying that it made them tear up, what it is about haka specifically that affects them this way? It makes sense that it gets to me - I am a Māori woman who has actual real-world associations related to haka, and in particular, "Ka Mate". But even Amy Poehler can't watch a haka without crying. How or why does it have this effect on people with no connection to Māoritanga or knowledge of te reo Māori?

Not today, coloniser

So I'm going to offer my best guess at this with the proviso that I am in no way an expert in haka. I've never even performed one properly (just chipped in from the sidelines as a supporting voice), and in fact I refused to "do a haka" at the request of Brits I met while living and working in London, which led to my boss at the time saying: "The other Kiwis we've had working here have all been happy enough to do a haka but the two Māori staff both refused?!"

I like to think if she'd just sat with that for a little while she might have been able to figure it out, but probably not. No, I'm not going to trot out my culture as a novelty for your amusement, lady, this is serious stuff.

Te ihi, te wehi, te wana

The most powerful haka I have ever experienced was at the tangi of a work colleague who was herself, a formidable kapa haka performer. As we walked onto the marae behind her casket there was an honour guard of dozens of people who knew her who created a tunnel of sound that was so powerful it felt like it might have had substance - sound made solid, filled with grief and pride and aroha. I'm starting to well up thinking about it and how much love and power there was in those moments.

And I think that I'm getting to the crux of why haka is so affecting. And why the one performed at Parliament yesterday was particularly so.

And again, this my own interpretation and by no means should be taken as canon, but imagine that you took all of your love, your mamae, your self-respect, your responsibilities towards your ancestors and your mokopuna, your pride, your grief, your rage, your fear, and YOUR POWER - basically your humanity in all its unfettered glory and you turned it into pure intention and let it vibrate your hands and the air around you as you forced it out into the world with your whole throat. And also the person right next to you is doing the same thing so you have that solidarity and shared intention with other people as part of it.

Would it break you apart on its way out? Would it tear through the fabric of timespace? Would you be the same person afterwards? Would some piece of you stay in the air as a warning or a comfort?

This kid's alright (I can't comment on the rest of them)

Would you even be capable of this if you didn't first understand who you were, your core values, and how to stand firm in those things? As someone who is nearing 50 and is only just starting to understand what these questions mean, I think maybe not. Which is what makes Maipi-Clarke's ability to do this all the more impressive to me. This is what raising kids right looks like.

I also think that what happens when people watch a haka, even continents away on a tiny screen, is that they see humanity writ large in full caps with multiple exclamation marks. The humanity in them recognises the turbo-charged humanity in others and that simple recognition makes people cry. Here is all the grief, anxiety, frustration, and yes, rage you've been hanging onto. Or maybe it's love, respect, and care. Because haka can do both. It can be different things at different times, and it can reflect back the things inside yourself that you very rarely, if ever, give a full-throated voice to.

Find out more

• Tusiata Avia's brilliant poem, In praise of Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke (a poem for my daughter)
• Hear from Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke about why she tore the bill in two
• More about Te Pāti Māori

¹ Just throwing some swearage in early in the first paragraph so any newbies know what they're getting themselves into. You're fucking welcome.

² Tried to embed this in the post. Couldn't. Fucked off about it, to be honest. UPDATE: I may have successfully embedded it. Cheers to @SachaDylan for the linky goodness.

³ For those of you not on BlueSky this is a feed of "Someone mentioned New Zealand" posts. We often (gently) correct foreigners about things related to Aotearoa New Zealand via this feed. Mentioning "New Zealand" once on BlueSky is kind of like saying Candyman in front of a mirror but with fewer meathooks.