The Haka is Changing

This worldwide, limelight exposure has many feeling that the Haka is losing its meaning, and many Maori elders despise what they feel is the bastardization of a powerful Maori tradition. In a recent article published by the British news publication, The Telegraph, Oliver Brown, their chief sports feature writer argues that “All Black’s Haka is, for all its vibrancy as a spectacle, scarcely more than a circus display these days.” He sights the recent performance of the Haka by the New Zealand basketball team as a prime example of how the Haka has lost its potency and meaning to the beholder. According to Brown, the reaction of the United States basketball team “spoke not of quavering fear, or steely ‘let’s see what you’ve got’ defiance, but utter befuddlement.” Brown argues that the challenge of the Haka has inextricably tied with it the right of those being challenged to reply. The modern sports world begs to differ, with the International Rugby Board having protocols in place that keep an opposing team from coming closer than ten meters from the performance of the Haka, wih stiff fines in place for those who encroach. Brown states, “The Haka, sadly, is hidebound by political correctness.”

I agree with Oliver Brown. To an extent. It is true that the modern Haka has been changed and transformed by the rules and regulations sanctioned by officials trying to keep the peace before a contest even begins. As unfortunate as it is, the modern Haka simply cannot be the challenge it once was, for a challenge with no reply is no challenge at all. The response and physicality that the Haka was meant to evoke in its beholders is one that we are afraid of as a society, and one that we do not want to see. The docile man of the 21^st century is afraid and astonished to feel the animalistic instincts of war and the desire to conquer an enemy well up within his own breast.