I’m so proud: my daughter’s photo is now featured on the front page of her school’s website! She’s up on stage, reaching for the sky. She’s got a feather in her hair and a moko on her chin. She’s a blonde American-born seven-year-old dancing the haka.
And now, on the website, she’s a mascot of our dear rural elementary, and thus—let a proud dad scale up here—a minor local symbol of the nation now raising our kids.
A symbol signifying what, exactly, I’ll be years in reckoning.
I will not link to the photo here. Allow me my parental illusions of protection. I reprint it here on social media only in doctored form. I didn’t know what to use to cover her eyes. I’d get any Māori symbol wrong, and anyhow my daughter isn’t Māori.
Last year when I dragged my son’s sweet smile into these letters I used a New Zealand flag, which fit that particular post just fine. To be absolutely fair—parents, you know the struggle—I will do the same here.
Looks goofy, though. It’s that dang Union Jack in the corner, plastered over a moment as decolonizing as any in my whole gringo-ass life.
But that’s New Zealand, ain’t it? For better, for worse, and for all the days in between.
There was a haka again in Parliament this week. Last year’s famous performance, led by MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, was a strategic act of protest against a bill that would unilaterally rewrite New Zealand’s founding treaty from a distinctly settler point of view. Maipi-Clarke killed it, the clip went viral, and the bill was dumped.
This week’s haka was an admittedly smaller moment. Newly elected MP Oriini Kaipara had long run past time on her maiden speech, then joined her supporters in the gallery for a waiata, or Māori song. When the song ended, someone in the gallery feted Kaipara with a haka. She returned the salute, as one does. Kaipara, a former journalist with TV charisma and a sonorous alto, can certainly hold a room! But without a nation-shaking bill on the docket there was, to some eyes here at least, a note of indulgence to the whole affair. Reasonable people can quibble over the proper time and place. Watching the clip I can almost sympathize with the exasperated Speaker Gerry Brownlee as he tries to keep the session on schedule.
But only almost. Here’s Gerry, as the supporter’s opening chant rings down from the gallery: “No, not that.”
Kaipara ignores him and jumps right in, throwing her eyes wide.
Gerry: “The guarantee was that would not be taking place.”
C’mon, Gerry. Respect the game! Tell her again she’s over time, sure. Bang the gavel if you must. But the big man’s dread, as it was with Maipi-Clarke last year, is clearly directed at the haka itself.
My Pākehā mates are nodding here. They see their grandfathers in Gerry. They see their dads who still pretend they don’t understand a single Māori word.
Me, I’m still surprised even after five years here. When you’re new in a country you fall hard for its highest ideals, or perhaps just those that match your own dreams. We arrived during Covid and Jacinda straight-up tucked us in the night before lockdown. I’ve seen the rollout of Matariki as a national holiday, when Jacinda joined a host of Maori leaders to boil kumara together on the roof of the national museum at dawn. I know intellectually that New Zealand has a reactionary rump-end determined to die on its colonial hill. But I don’t feel that shadow in my bones like I do the US version.
My daughter in that temporary-tattoo moko is descended, in one narrow line, from a slaveowner in antebellum Georgia by the immelodious name of Kinchen Thweat.
She doesn’t know it yet. I’ll let her dance without that fun fact a while. One day I’ll tell her and she can dance with it, too.
We contain multitudes, eh Gerry?
The guarantee in moving to New Zealand was that the haka would absolutely be taking place.
The haka is 100% Pure New Zealand, front and center on the damn tourism website. See the student hakas for the murdered in the Christchurch massacre, done in school blazers between road cones in the street. This very month I watched the All Blacks perform a banger in front of their Aussie rivals on a big screen down at the South Wairarapa Workingman’s Club. The room was nearly 100% Pure Old White People and you could hear a pin drop.
Come on down, Gerry, to the Wairarapa Events Centre on a weekend morning in the spring. Sit with a hundreds-strong crowd of parents, grandparents, teachers, and fellow students to cheer on their kids as they sing and shout their hearts out.
Stay to watch my little girl. She and her mates have been practicing all year. Oriini Kaipara celebrated joining Parliament; now watch my little girl join Aotearoa.
Stay until the end of the show, Gerry. Half a dozen schools from across the valley, each with their own hakas. More than one featured the proud local chant: Ko Wairarapa! It was 100% Pure New Zealand up there, mate. No mics. No screens. No Disney. No AI. No shoes.
The kapa haka teacher from Featherston School, just down the road from ours, apologized as she took a moment to herd her massive squad on the stage. Ka pai, the crowd called back. Then the kids from Feathy gave a rousing show, led by an utterly captivating Year 6 (?) boy and girl who could go toe-to-toe with Kaipara any day.
Now watch, Gerry, as the Featherston high schoolers out in the audience—these kids’ big brothers and big sisters, their neighbors, their babysitters, their friends—rose from their seats and began shouting a haka back to the stage.
Shouting’s the only word for it. These teenagers were all the way in, not a breath held back. The boys’ shouts cracking, wild and deep. The girls’ shouts the shouts of women. They knew all the words by heart, Gerry. The little kids up on stage stood transfixed in their love.
A wave broke inside my chest. Who the hell am I? But tears are tears. I am here now.
Anyone ever shout how much they love you, Gerry? They never did for me. Our people don’t do that much. Which is fine. Takes all kinds.
Maybe we oughta try shouting a little more, Gerry. Here. Stand up. We can learn a few new words, we can.
Deep breath, Gerry. Ready?
Now let ‘er rip. //
On the Hikoi, and the haka last time:
Kia ora Dan, Beautiful korero.
I got that heart and tear bursting moment reading about the haka breaking out between the older siblings and students in the audience for the young performers on stage - must have been amazing.
Yes, Gerry it is to your shame that you suppress an outpouring of love and respect, because that is what the haka is.
Thanks Dan for your easy examples of how much Aotearoa NZ actually value haka! Thank you for sharing your proud moment with your daughter with us.
Kia ora.
Kia ora Dan, now that’s a fine piece of writing! The haka part brought a tear or two to this aging pakeha wahine. I grew up with Māori as my dad taught at a country school for several years and my siblings and I were the only white kids. Not that we noticed, he encouraged te Reo and we all learned it to a reasonable level. We really only noticed the difference when we moved to a nearby town where the locals were much less inclined to share our views. In the South Island which will surprise no one. Sixty years later I have loved and encouraged the revival of te Reo being much more widely used. My grandson in Y12 achieved Excellence. This was a joy to read. Nga Mihi ehoa