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The Independent
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
How controversy over Maori haka sparked chaos in New Zealand parliament
The haka, a traditional Maori dance of challenge, has transcended its sacred origins to become a cherished cultural symbol for all New Zealanders. From sporting events to funerals and graduations, its powerful performances often resonate globally, a source of national pride. However, a haka performed within the country's Parliament in November has ignited a fiery debate, dividing politicians on whether it constituted peaceful protest or an act of intimidation. Three Maori Party legislators performed the haka during a protest against a bill to redefine the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand 's founding document, leading to proposed sanctions of unprecedented length. A parliamentary vote on the bans was unexpectedly postponed on Tuesday, pushing the contentious issue to June. The delay threatens to stall the legislative agenda until a cross-party consensus can be reached on the appropriate response. Outside Parliament, hundreds of protesters gathered on Tuesday, waiting to greet the Maori Party lawmakers with a haka of their own, demonstrating the depth of feeling surrounding the issue. What is the haka? The haka was once viewed as a war dance, but that understanding has changed in New Zealand as it has been embraced in a range of celebratory, sombre and ceremonial settings. It is an expression of Maori identity and while sacred, it can be performed by people of any race who are educated by Maori in the words, movements and cultural protocols. Emotional haka have generated news headlines in the past year when performed by soldiers farewelling a New Zealander who died fighting in Ukraine, and in Paris by athletes from New Zealand's Olympic team. While the best-known haka is 'Ka Mate', the chant often performed by the All Blacks rugby team before games, there are many variants. Why was this haka controversial? November's protest wasn't the first time a haka has rung out in Parliament. Performances regularly follow the passage of laws important to Maori. But some lawmakers decried this one for two reasons: because the legislators from Te Pati Maori, the Maori Party, left their seats and strode across the floor toward government politicians while performing it, and because it disrupted the vote on a proposed law. When asked how the Maori party would vote on a bill that they said would dismantle Indigenous rights, Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke – New Zealand's youngest parliamentarian, at 22 – tore up a copy of the law and began the haka, joined by two of her colleagues. The law, an attempt to rewrite New Zealand's founding treaty between Maori tribal leaders and the British crown, was widely unpopular and has since been defeated. But for six months, a committee of the MPs' peers have fought furiously about how, or whether, their protest of it should be punished. Why is debate about this haka still going? Usually, there is agreement among parliamentarians about penalties for errant behaviour. But this episode polarised the committee considering the lawmakers' actions. Its report recommended Ms Maipi-Clarke, who the committee said showed contrition in a letter, be suspended for seven days and her colleagues for 21 days. That is the harshest penalty ever assigned to New Zealand politicians; the previous record was three days. This month, Parliament Speaker Gerry Brownlee scheduled a rare, unlimited debate in Parliament until all parties could find consensus on the penalty, citing the severity of the proposed bans. But minutes after the debate began Tuesday, it was adjourned at the government's behest after they allowed the Maori party lawmakers to stay until after Thursday's budget was delivered. It permitted the government their budget week agenda and meant the Maori MPs, who are opponents of the government, would not miss one of Parliament's most significant dates. But the debate about the bans will then resume. Opposition leader Chris Hipkins, the only opponent of the sanctions to speak before debate was suspended, cited episodes where MPs have brawled in Parliament and driven a tractor up the building's steps, but were not suspended, as evidence that the bans were not fair. But Judith Collins, the chair of the committee that produced the sanctions, said the penalties were 'not about the haka'. Ms Collins said the MPs' behaviour was the most egregious she had ever witnessed. What happens next? The debate will resume on 5 June, when it threatens to stall usual government business once more. The government said on Tuesday that it would not back down from the punishments suggested and opposition parties said they could not be swayed from disputing them. Outside Parliament, activist Eru Kapa-Kingi told the assembled crowd that the haka was 'a source of fear' in Parliament. 'Even though when the All Blacks do it it's a good thing,' he added.
Irish Times
09-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane: A potentially transformative vision
Is a River Alive? Author : Robert Macfarlane ISBN-13 : 978-0241624814 Publisher : Hamish Hamilton Guideline Price : £25 In 2017, the Whanganui river, which flows through the North Island of New Zealand , was accorded a legal identity: 'personhood', with appointed guardians to defend its rights. The Whanganui has long been bound up with Maori culture: it is regarded as taonga, a treasured possession; and its new legal status was achieved during the period of a conservative government in New Zealand, and passed into law with the backing of that government, though only after years of battle and argument. Legal personhood cannot be regarded as the end of the matter: far from it – the river and its catchment continue to suffer from pollution, and from the effects of upstream water diversions; the Whanganui is by no means a pristine ecosystem. But the attainment of legal personhood may be seen as a necessary first step: an essential moment in an inevitably long and tortuous process that defends the rights of nature – and of the future – against destruction in the name of economic progress. In the course of Is a River Alive?, Robert Macfarlane argues compellingly the case for regarding rivers – and by implication, all other elements of the natural world – as living beings, with all that flows from this in terms of fundamental rights and protections. The decision to frame the book's title as a question indicates, one must assume, a nod to the niceties of diplomacy and persuasion, although the briefest glance at this issue – indeed, the briefest glance at the poisoned environments within which we all now live – demonstrates that the answer must be a resounding yes: that rivers, landscapes and ecosystems must now be imagined and engaged with in new ways. It is a potentially transformative vision – and one that makes fundamental sense, both intellectually and emotionally. Indeed, the book itself immediately sweeps away what is a redundant question mark: Macfarlane describes his book as 'a journey into an idea that changes the world' – and his remarkable and devastating prologue condenses time with a description of a single chalk stream through the ages, rising in and running through the south of England. He describes the origins of the stream in the deep past, its wells and springs laid down by Ice Age glaciers, its waters flowing before and through human history, witnessed by serfs, monarchs and poets, coming under increasing strain from an exploding and thirsty population that taps the aquifer feeding the stream and pollutes its diminishing waters – until in the boiling summer of 2022, the chalk stream chokes, runs dry, dies. Although Macfarlane has written feelingly of many specific places, the landscapes of southern England and the chalk rivers that course through them – among the rarest ecosystems in the world – are his home ground, his own place; little wonder, then, that he writes with such passion and persuasion of their desecration in the name of economic growth. But his prose moves almost at once farther afield: on from the desiccating springs of the Thames in England to the dying Po in Italy, to the shrinking Rhine in Germany, where drought stones have emerged from the waters: READ MORE Wenn du mich siest, danne weine. If you see me, weep. This, then, is no localised book. Just as our own lives and futures are in danger, Macfarlane makes clear, so are the futures of everyone – and Is a River Alive? weaves an interconnected global web in which human threats loom large. The narrative flows on, from the cloud forests of Ecuador, at risk from mining, to the lagoons of India, sickening from environmental pollution, to the river courses of Quebec, threatened by dams. In each case the perils are elemental and immediate; in each case the landscapes that are imperilled are bound up with the lives and identities of local human cultures – and in each case, it is these same human cultures that are resisting the essentially anonymised threat posed by extractive global capitalism. [ Abhainn: This Dublin walking trail is a love letter to the city's forgotten rivers Opens in new window ] Macfarlane returns repeatedly to the image of running water, relating it to our own identity and being. He quotes the Maori expression 'Ko wai koe?' (Who are your waters? – meaning, 'Where are you from? Where did you begin?') It is a question that goes to the heart of each of our identities, expressing the power latent in the image of a river running free. As Macfarlane observes, 'everyone lives in a watershed', and the world's waters run in our veins too. And while there is on the face of it little enough hope that environmental disaster can now be staved off, Macfarlane does find grounds for optimism, flowing from the essential nature of water itself as revivifying, replenishing, restorative – as healing, given half a chance. 'Hope,' he writes, 'is the things with rivers.' But hope must be accompanied by transformative action – before it is too late.
