STILL With The Haka?

 Here's one to chalk up to the category of NOT being ignorantly blissful: 

As any true friend of mine knows I played rugby for 4 years in high school, 2 years in uni, and recreationally in between. I love the sport and still avidly follow it today. 

I have a good friend who just returned from a visit to NZ. He asked me if I'd like for him to get me anything from NZ and the only things that came to mind for me were rugby merch. He brought me back an official practice jersey of my favourite rugby team (other than the Canadian squad) the NZ All Blacks. I have followed them since the time of Jonah Lomu 

Look at this beast!

Definitely my favourite player of all time. He had Polynesian Tongan ancestry. Like some other All Blacks from Tonga, Fiji, and Somoa, who also do the Haka before games, he felt comfortable performing the Haka, a traditional "war dance?" that NZ does before every single international game they play, and the governing bodies of rugby LET THEM! Here he is doing the Haka:

Do you think he knew? Do you think any one of these dudes knew the history behind this "dance?" I mean seriously, It includes the cutting of the throat gesture complete with the tongue sticking out, smacking of elbows and thighs and other sorts of unmistakable gestures that signify harm to the onlookers. Just look at it! Pure unsportsmanlike intimidation. I often have thought, what kind of enemy would wait until this dance was over? Just attack them before they can finish! But unlike the reluctant opposition of the NZ All Blacks who are inexplicably forced to endure the Haka before every NZ All Blacks game, the poor people who the Maori were about to fight, kill, rape, and likely eat couldn't have been impressed enough by the dance to sit through it, could they? Could ANY tribe be so peaceful as to look at that and maintain a "love will conquer all" mentality? We'll come back to that...

A warlike tribe certainly would not have suffered the enemy its trash talking before the battle, would they? Well first of all, is it trash talking? What are they saying? Here are the two versions of the Haka translated. You know... the Ka mate (which a Kiwi member of my university rugby squad taught our team) is not that bad. It's about a hairy man chasing the sun and our lives being our daily progression toward being with it in the sky I guess... Kinda harmless. But then after a disastrous Trinations tournament in which NZ lost to S. Africa AND Australia, the coach saw the team laughing, joking, and drinking like they didn't care. So they changed to the Kapa O Pango. "This is MY time. I will triumph. I will achieve a properly revered place on high!" and with the addition of scowls, screams, and throat gashing it is the very definition of poor sportsmanship no matter what hogwash you might want to come up with about honouring the heritage of the Maori.

Although the Maori wars were actual life and death and the All Black games are just sport, the Haka ranks up there with the first down chain and sticks in football in my opinion as one of the most ludicrous absurdities in sport. There is no sporting league that I can think of in which they wouldn't get a taunting, delay of game, or unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for the Haka. So why is it allowed? The population of NZ is roughly 18% Maori. Does this Maori dance truly represent the entire country, most of which can claim no link to it by birth? What about the make-up of the squad? To squash any bigoted assumptions right now, the name is about the uniforms, not the heritage of team members. In fact during the time of Apartheid in S. Africa, one of the fiercest rivals of the All Blacks, the team could not include Maori players during tours there. This fact actually contributed to the end of Apartheid believe it or not!

I wonder... did the all white squads who faced the Springbok teams of the past (The All White All Blacks tee hee) do the Haka before those games? I have my doubts... 

There actually IS a rugby team in NZ called the Maori All Black that requires Maori heritage to be a member. Yet, when you try to find the heritage of members of the actual rugby union NZ All Blacks squad to see if Maori are representatively present on the team, you get blocked by websites about this team. I have found through internet research that of the 1133 players who have been All Blacks (date?) 13 were from Samoa, 9 from Tonga, and 8 from Fiji AND that Pasifika players have been better represented over the years than Maori on the team. If any of this is true, it would lead me to believe there have been less than 3% Maori squad members. Because of reverse-racism, wokeism, whateverism, stats such as these are increasingly difficult to find. However, I think I would be safe in saying that the NZ All Blacks doing the Haka before games is about at appropriate as the Dallas Cowboys doing a Navajo rain dance before games and there is no doubt there is no FUCKING doubt that they'd be crucified for cultural appropriation for doing so! So the question lingers: why the hell does this still happen? 

I don't know how many current All Blacks have Maori heritage, but I feel like they treat the Haka like other sports' players honour the national anthems of the foreign countries before games in which they play. So it's not a big deal right? If current hockey phenoms Connor Bedard, Leo Carlsson, and Adam Fantilli can all stand with hats off and hands on heart during the pre-game national anthems of countries where they were not born, the Haka shouldn't bother anyone much, should it? It's just a pre-game chant and dance performed by players predominantly non-native to the land of its origin. So... no worries, right mates? Dave quickly checks the internet to see if "no worries, mate" is not just an Australian phrase understanding that Kiwis hate being mistaken for Aussies as much as his countrymen hate being mistaken for Americans. He also frantically researches to find that the use of the term "Kiwi" to refer to native New Zealanders is NOT acceptable when referring to Maoris even though he has been told by native Kiwis that they are fine with the term. Is this much ado about nothing? Are we falling all over ourselves to avoid offense? Should we listen to Aussie (an inoffensive term btw) Steve Hughes?

Guns Germs and Steel.  This book won the Pulitzer for Jared Diamond. His name DOES sound like a Harlequin novelist, but if you read the book you will understand the erudite subject matter that warranted the Pulitzer. This guy knows all kinds of stuff and he can come at any story from angles of archeology, biology, geology, history and even birdwatching to give us an intellectual idea of what he is talking about. I read chapters one and two today after just yesterday receiving a beautiful official practice shirt of the NZ All Blacks squad and two squeeze balls with their logo on them. I will still keep the shirt and the two squeeze balls, but my support of the NZ All Blacks is in jeopardy, and I'm almost ashamed to wear the damn t-shirt! Well, maybe I'll give one of the balls away, but after having read the story of the Maori and the Moriori tribe of the Chatham Islands, why, the Haka offends me.

I have no idea whether the Haka was performed prior to the genocide that is the story of the Maori/Moriori clash, but it probably could have been and that makes the tale all the more soul-wrenching. Folks, I don't want to get too far into detail because it is a depressing, and as Diamond tells us, repetitive microcosm of world history played out in Polynesia not so very long ago. The Moriori came from NZ sometime in the 1500's. That's right, as the similar names might hint at, the Moriori WERE Maori. Because of the climate and land restrictions the Moriori became pacifist hunter-gatherers. Because of the precarious existence of the population due to their inability to plant the crops they had become accustomed to in NZ, they abandoned warfare, weapons, and cannibalism. Between 1835 and 1868, the Taranaki Maori (to whom blood relations must have still existed) killed, pillaged, raped, ate, and enslaved their former relatives. 

Jared Diamond writes that it has to do with what we call "advancement," the growing of crops, diversification, development of "sophisticated" society. As that happens, violence, wanderlust, elitism, and imperialism are natural byproducts. The Maori's elimination of the Moriori, and you can read the history and view a picture of the last full-blooded Moriori here, all happened because of "progress" or "advancement," two euphemisms that have become commonplace in our horrific world. The most poignant parts to me were the comment of a Moriori survivor about how they were killed like sheep and the Maori who said it was done "in accordance with our customs." These two people shared the same customs only a few hundred years prior to this massive culture clash! This really drives Diamond's point home!

It is said that the New Zealand All Blacks perform the Haka to honour the Maori culture; to acknowledge great achievements/occasions; to celebrate strength ahead of battle; to summon ancestors to aid them in that battle; to intimidate the opponents. Next time you see it keep the Moriori in mind. Did they do this dance prior to the achievement/occasion of slaughtering the Moriori? Was it considered "strength" to defeat an opponent who outnumbered you convincingly but who would not abandon their peaceful ways and fight back? Wouldn't this represent an unquestionably cowardly desire in the All Blacks that the other team NOT give them any opposition? And aside from the few All Blacks with Maori blood, wouldn't the majority of the ancestors ignore this foreign ceremony or if successfully invoked encourage the All Black members to play cricket or soccer or some sport more traditionally associated to their cultures? 

Finally, and I've said this before, if the dance is stated as a form of intimidation, something penalized in most sport or at least frowned upon, how about you just let your play and your record do the intimidating? That would be more sportsmanlike. The All Blacks are probably the most dominant team in sport with something like a 77% all time winning percentage. They are beautiful to watch and continue to field superlative teams. It almost defies sporting logic! Maybe they believe the Haka contributes to their success but to me it just makes them look really stupid when they lose. Which, btw, they do more and more often. And (SWEET) they do look stupid. Like every time we've seen the trash-talking, taunting poor sport get crushed, I now actually enjoy watching the All Blacks lose as much as win. And it's all because of the pre-game ceremony called the Haka. 

Why don't we all feel about All Black losses the way we feel about the dude in this video?

At worst the Haka is a genocide celebrating, reverse-racist, superfluous pre-game ceremony. At it's very best it's just showboating and in the words of the aptly Australian commentator, that's just cheeky. In this day and age where everybody get participation trophies, maybe the only thing more miraculous than the outrageous winning percentage the All Blacks continue to maintain, is the fact that the pre-game Haka is allowed to persist. 

I know SOME of my readers who will agree to disagree with this. What do you reckon?