Hands off our haka

And cue the good old haka debate after an All Blacks win!

First of all, Irish rugby writer Ewan MacKenna is not the first to call for a ban on the haka, and no doubt, he won’t be the last. There were many calls to ban it 2005 – largely due to misinterpretation of the throat-cutting gesture, which actually alludes to the drawing of the breath of life into the heart and lungs.

Fast forward to RWC 2019. For his column for the Pundit Arena on September 23, Ewan MacKenna wrote that it is unfortunate World Rugby continues to pander to the haka “as New Zealand are justifiably big-headed enough without a massaging of their already massive egos”. His call for a ban of the haka, not surprisingly, caused a flurry of social media activity, before he issued this provocative Tweet.

This haka does not exist due to modern marketing. It exists due to acceptance and tolerance. If he hasn’t already been, this man needs to visit NZ. He needs Buck Shelford to take him on the same journey he took John Eales on for his documentary about the tradition.

Then maybe he too will learn how the haka “unifies Māori and other strands of New Zealand culture as tradition recognised as important by New Zealanders of multiple ethnicities”.

In response to MacKenna’s call to have the haka banned, Shelford said, “Until you live in a country that has a great Māori culture like New Zealand… you are pretty naive, to say the least”.

The haka’s relationship with NZ rugby is a long one. It was first performed “by the New Zealand Native [rugby] team on their long and arduous tour of 1888/89”. The ABs have been doing a pre-match haka since the Originals tour in 1905, although it’s not altogether clear whether a haka was performed before every Test.

The haka MacKenna has labelled as nothing more than “marketing and exploitation” is obviously a lot newer than the traditional Ka Mate (written around 1820). Kapa o Pango has been performed since 2005 and was written especially for the team. The ABs wanted “a haka that said who they were, where they are from, and to create a legacy they wanted to leave for future All Blacks”.

So Māori customs and culture expert Derek Lardelli wrote Kapa o Pango (‘the team in black’) to reflect this Polynesian influence. After its debut before the August 2005 Tri-Nations match against South Africa at Carisbrook, Springbok captain John Smit described it as a privilege to witness.

Schools in NZ have haka written for them to embody their particular culture, so the ABs having a haka written especially for them is not a one-off modern marketing phenomenon. Or are NZ schools also kowtowing to marketing and exploitation? Or could it possibly be a national awakening of acceptance to all that contribute and participate?

(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Does it give the ABs an unfair advantage? Well, John Eales didn’t think so. “I never felt it gave [the All Blacks] an unfair advantage, but it did let them own those moments before kickoff and we were basically just passively taking it. The true value of the haka is in connection, and as the opposition, you need to decide how you are going to connect and not dissipate as a team in that moment.”

Isn’t that a refreshing take on it. The opposition can use it to connect, just like the ABs can. And we’ve seen teams to that in the past – the Welsh face-off in 2008, the French standing a few feet away from the ABs at the RWC quarter-final in 2007 and holding hands and approaching in arrow-head format in the RWC final in 2011, and Ireland’s figure-of-eight in Chicago in 2016 to name just four examples.

And where are the calls to ban the other Pacific Nations’ cultural expressions?

There it is in a nutshell. This controversy isn’t actually about the haka itself, it’s about the All Blacks’ dominance. If the ABs were from a tier-two nation, there would be no condemnation of the haka. But here’s where MacKenna’s logic falls flat: as we know, the ABs can be beaten. Has MacKenna forgotten about Chicago and Dublin? I bet he hasn’t.

And the ABs did the haka before both of those matches. And what about our 24-year RWC drought? There was a haka before every match. So how come this unfair advantage he’s writing about doesn’t work for every game? It certainly didn’t work in Perth!

Surely the result of a match is more about the opposition rising to the challenge rather than being psyched out by what he refers to as a dance. If players are that easily thrown, how on earth do they cope playing in front of 50,000 screaming and booing fans? Aren’t rugby players professionals? Do they not use visualisation exercises to help them control situations? Don’t teams work with psychologists to better focus and have their heads in the right space?

If so, how are the players so easily affected by the haka?

The argument that it keeps the New Zealanders warm while the opposition stiffens up is also wrong. Kapa o Pango lasts for about one and a half minutes. I’ve seen refereeing decisions take longer. Should they be banned too?

But it’s not just the use of the haka in rugby that’s MacKenna has an opinion on – he believes it’s also overdone in life in general. “A New Zealand graduation or homecoming, a wedding afters or merely a boozed-up night out, it seems, can barely pass by without a YouTube video emerging of a man leaping about with all the authenticity of a Blackrock College conversation detailing both tillage methodology and livestock vaccination”.

So he thinks he is justified in telling New Zealanders how they should celebrate. That would be akin to a New Zealander telling the Irish or Scottish to have no more cèilidhs. It’s arrogant and ignorant.

He also mentioned the “huge lack of self-awareness” about the ABs performing the haka, because “the majority of New Zealand players haven’t been Maori. Instead, they descend from forefathers who were actually ruthless oppressors of natives.”

NZ writer Kevin Norquay found this particularly “hypocritical” considering MacKenna is asking for the haka to be banned. He wrote: “So the way to counter this ruthless oppression of Māori, is more ruthless oppression?”

And this is what interests me in particular: disrespecting Indigenous culture is never cool. And there’s a difference between accepting the challenge (in whichever way you wish) and disrespecting it. While hearing the RSA fans singing a Spanish football song during the haka before our opening match at this RWC irritated me, I didn’t find it overly disrespectful.

I did, however, feel sorry for the fans – in particular the Japanese fans – who were looking forward to seeing a haka for the first time.

And that response was completely shown up by how respectful the English fans were to Tonga’s Sipi Tau. But Matt Dawson mocking the haka in the buildup to RWC 2015 with his so-called Hakarena was nothing but orchestrated disrespect.

And here’s the thing, it’s 2019 and there’s still voices mocking and trying to silence Indigenous culture. And that’s incredibly problematic. Especially in the present political environment, how is it even appropriate to discuss the silencing of Indigenous culture?

What on earth gives MacKenna the right to take away what others enjoy? While it’s not everybody’s cup of tea – which is fair enough – there’s people all over the world who love the haka.

If you read the comments on any post about any haka, there’s always way more people that like than loath it.

And let’s not forget, any nation can apply to WR to perform a cultural activity before a match.