It’s been 46 years since the 1979 Haka Party Incident, a key moment in the history of race relations in Aotearoa. But how much progress have we truly made?
A new documentary explores the incident from both perspectives for the first time.
The film looks at the events of May 1st, 1979, when He Tauā, a group of Māori and Pasifika activists, confronted University of Auckland engineering students performing a ‘mock’ haka for their capping stunt.
The clash forced Aotearoa to confront systemic racism and led to a shift towards a more equal relationship between Pākehā and Māori.
“I tell the story from both sides—from ngā iwi Māori me ngā iwi Pākehā,” says director Katie Wolfe at a special screening in Tāmaki Makaurau this week.
“The engineers get to speak their truth about what happened that day.”
“I think it really helps us understand who we were as a country and who we are now.”
He tohu whakamānawa i a rātau mā
Ka whai atu tēnei pakipūmeka i te whakaari a Wolfe (Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Toa Rangatira) i whakaaturia ki ngā whare tapere o te motu i te tau 2023.
I roto i te pakipūmeka The Haka Party Incident, ka kitea ngā uiui ō-mua a te rōpū He Tauā—ko Hone Harawira, Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, Ben Dalton, Brent Meekan mā.
Āpiti atu ko David Merritt, Ian Gibson, Tākuta Ranginui Walker me Mitzi Nairn mā - te hunga i whai pānga nui ai ki tēnei kaupapa.
Ka rangona ō rātau whakaaro, te hiranga o tēnei maiki nui, me ngā hononga i waenga i te Pākehā me te Māori i Aotearoa nei.
Ka rere anō ngā mihi a Wolfe ki te ‘wahine toa’ ki a Miriama Rauhihi-Ness me te huhua o ngā tāngata kua whetūrangihia.
Te pāhao ahurea i ngā tau 70—‘he mea māori noa’
“When we have things on cultural appropriation, I’m talking about the 1970s of that time; it just seemed normal,” te kī a Wolfe.
“When people have an understanding of that, that they’ve sort of been blinkered about what society is—where Māori culture can stand in society, where Pākehā are not being sympathetic to those things—there’s real moments of a lightbulb going on, going, ‘Oh, I see it now.”
Police violence in the 70s—‘most shocking revelation’
Wolfe began working on both the play and documentary in 2017, aiming to shed light on this important event, noting there was little awareness of it. She says the most shocking revelation was the widespread police violence in the 1970s.
“The members of He Tauā—both the men and the women—were treated very badly at the police station. The more I looked into it, it just seemed like that was the way things rolled back then,” she adds.
“That culture, I think, is something the police have left behind but have never really looked into.”
Ngāi Rangatahi—ngā rangatira o te anamata
Hei tā Wolfe, he rangatahi tonu te nuinga o ngā tauira whare wānanga i whai pānga atu ki te maiki rā—18-22 tau te pakeke.
“So the spirit of those times and the way that we remember our youth is really inside the film as well.”
Ka whakapono hoki ia ki ngā rangatahi o te anamata, e kōkiri ana i ngā tini kaupapa o te wā.
“We can see with Hana Rawhiti and her incredible actions this year—[rangatahi] lead out the future.”
“We see the mahi these fellas started back in the 1970s, where they are now, [even] though we’ve made tremendous gains; [all] it takes is a few personalities to really wanna pull that back. So there’s a real line that we draw right from the haka party incident right up now to the Treaty Principles Bill.”
Kua rewa te pakipūmeka The Haka Party Incident ki ngā whare pikitia puta noa i te motu.
