A new documentary is putting the spotlight back on a 1979 dispute over a drunken haka.
For more than 25 years, University of Auckland engineering students would perform a mock haka each capping week. By the 1970s, it had turned into an unruly pub crawl.
“It was fun. You have to remember back in those days, society was pretty strict, so being able to run around and block traffic in the middle of the street and carry on, like a bit of silliness,” former Auckland University student Brent Meekan, who took part in the mock haka, said.
“That was great fun, so we enjoyed it.”
While it was seen as a bit of light-hearted fun, Māori and Pākehā activists tried for years to have the haka stopped.
“I aua wa, kaha ana te ao te whakakahoretia i te tu o te Māori (In those times, everyone was trying to deny the Māori voice),” former MP Hone Harawira said.
In 1979, activist group He Taua confronted the engineering students as they rehearsed. Three minutes of violence followed in what would become known as the haka party incident.
Now, the moment has been explored in a new documentary.
“This was a moment of conflict between Māori and Pākehā that it must have been significant. So, I was really perplexed why it was so unknown,” director Katie Wolfe said.
While it did make headlines, it was attributed to gangs.
“There was a stereotype within society back then that anything that involved conflict with Māori was immediately seen as this gang scare,” Wolfe said.
Members of He Taua were arrested, and several were convicted.
However, the incident was hardly talked about later.
“Na te kore whakaae a Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga kia tuku atu i tera mohioranga i roto i nga kura katoa (Because the Ministry of Education did not want other universities knowing what we had done),” Harawira, then a member of He Taua, said.
After attending court, Meekan realised the frustrations for Māori ran deeper than protesting the haka.
Forty-five years after the incident, he’s reflected on his involvement.
“I can’t turn back the time, but I do think we were dumb, and we were naive, and I think about my own journey now to understanding the two cultures, and think, you know. ‘That was really silly’,” he said.
Wolfe said while graduating engineering students took part in the haka rehearsals, “the tradition was that you did the haka party, so it wasn’t like they were wilfully creating this”.
“They were just in the flow of society at that time,” she said.
The Haka Party Incident will hit the big screen on January 30.
