Joel Maxwell (Te Rarawa) is an experienced senior journalist and Stuff’s kaiwhakamāori/translator.
OPINION: There are moments in history when tragedy erupts so unexpectedly, so catastrophically, as to become an intergenerational spectacle. Those sad bodies eternally cast in long-cold Pompeii ash. The monochrome horror of The Hindenburg Zeppelin erupting in flames.
Those 4028 French people wearing oversized promotional T-shirts, performing a haka in Stade Amédée-Domenech.
Yep, back in 2014, French rugby club Brive, synergising profusely with its Japanese car manufacturer sponsor, broke the record for the world’s biggest haka.
It is exactly as philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said: if you gaze long enough into the abyss, #HAKAMAZDA gazes back at you.
All of the above is to say I think I’ve found my legit worst online video so far this year, maybe my entire life. I know, we’ve all been self-tenderising with this digital meat mallet for years, and I’ve given myself as bad a case of wagyū brain as the next person. But this was something else.
I swear this column started off as some lighthearted fun to help raise awareness of the upcoming attempt at the world’s biggest haka, at Eden Park on Sunday, September 29, doubling as a charity fundraiser.
It aims to bring the record home because, weirdly, it is held by France, which took it from Ngāruawāhia a decade ago as part of, what I have only recently discovered, a promotional event run with Brive’s sponsor, Mazda.
Because of course I had to go and search for a video of the actual French event. The YouTube video I found is ominously titled #HAKAMAZDA. Le plus grande haka du monde à Brive.
This was 10 years ago, and some progress has been made on awareness of global indigenous experiences, cultures, languages and people.
I hope so, because seriously, here on the video is some Mazda-merched-up blond dude sporting a drawn-on mataora (facial tattoo) having a good old chuckle.
Here is someone leading the haka via PA, laying down the words with all the awesome majesty of Pepé Le Pew, that rascally sex-pest skunk; it would appear that running reo Māori words through a French accent is the verbal equivalent of someone selecting a kitty-face filter to film the casket lid closing on their dead uncle. Something hilarious is happening but not something you ever necessarily wanted to experience.
The kaihaka (performers) themselves are goofing it up. Some are genuinely trying. Others look confused. Awkward. They all look like they’re having fun though, which I guess is something. And ultimately, the important thing is that we test drive the latest Mazda CX-5 for a more intuitive, confident driving experience.
Am I being too harsh on the French? I’ll admit I’m biased. I’ll probably take anything Māori over anything French any day of the week.
Baguette? So what. It’s bread, but long. OK, I’ll admit the French roll is excellent - it’s just that the delicious sour-sweet, densely textured rēwena is better.
Give me Stan Walker over Édith Piaf. Give me huhu grubs over escargot. Give me Temuera Morrison over Gérard Depardieu.
The Waikato River? It has a taniwha on every bend. The Seine’s most recent claim to fame was giving diarrhoea to elite athletes.
We have a long history of resisting French influence in the Pacific. Perhaps there is no more powerful symbol of this than Buck Shelford’s testicle vs the entire French rugby team.
Famously, the Māori backrower got stitched up and continued playing despite having a stomped, and grievously injured scrotum. It emitted a testicle in a way that, I imagine, resembled the issue from a grape caught in the pages of an abruptly slammed hardback.
But seriously, I do like to think the type of record attempt that happened in Brive is a cultural relic from a past age. That it wouldn’t happen again. That any further attempts will only happen here in Aotearoa, led by the proper people.
It’s time to turn the page.
There is a long history of European nations treating indigenous cultures as something exotic, indeed, it is a history that has been written as long as those nations traversed the world, adding indigenous lands as fresh parking lots on trade routes.
They took our haka and treated it like it was just one of those funny dances from far-away places. It is our supreme good fortune to live in one of those far-away places. Let’s take it back again.
To register for the world record haka attempt visit: www.hakarecord.co.nz.
For more information on the charity recipient Raukatari Music Therapy Trust visit www.rmtc.org.nz.
- Stuff