Haka are a variety of ceremonial dances in Māori culture. A performance art, haka are often performed by a group, with vigorous movements and stamping of the feet with rhythmically shouted accompaniment. Haka have been traditionally performed by both men and women for a variety of social functions within Māori culture. They are performed to welcome distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements, occasions, or funerals.
Kapa haka groups are common in schools. The main Māori performing arts competition, Te Matatini, takes place every two years.
New Zealand sports teams’ practice of performing a haka to challenge opponents before international matches has made the dance form more widely known around the world. This tradition began with the 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team tour and has been carried on by the New Zealand rugby union team (known as the All Blacks) since 1905. Although popularly associated with the traditional battle preparations of male warriors, conceptions that haka are typically war dances, and the inaccurate performance of haka by non-Māori, are considered erroneous by Māori scholars.
Etymology
The group of people performing a haka is referred to as a kapa haka (kapa meaning group or team, and also rank or row). The Māori word haka has cognates in other Polynesian languages, for example: Samoan saʻa (saʻasaʻa), Tokelauan haka, Rarotongan ʻaka, Hawaiian haʻa, Marquesan haka, meaning ‘to be short-legged’ or ‘dance’; all from Proto-Polynesian saka, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian sakaŋ, meaning ‘bowlegged’.
History and practice
According to Māori scholar Tīmoti Kāretu, haka have been “erroneously defined by generations of uninformed as ‘war dances’”, while Māori mythology places haka as a dance “about the celebration of life”. Following a creation story, the sun god, Tama-nui-te-rā, had two wives, the Summer Maid, Hine-raumati, and the Winter Maid, Hine-takurua. Haka originated in the coming of Hine-raumati, whose presence on still, hot days was revealed in a quivering appearance in the air. This was haka of Tāne-rore, the son of Hine-raumati and Tama-nui-te-rā. Hyland comments that “[t]he haka is (and also represents) a natural phenomena [sic]; on hot summer days, the ‘shimmering’ atmospheric distortion of air emanating from the ground is personified as ‘Te Haka a Tānerore’”
War haka (peruperu) were originally performed by warriors before a battle, proclaiming their strength and prowess in order to intimidate the enemy. Various actions are employed in the course of a performance, including facial contortions such as showing the whites of the eyes (pūkana), and poking out the tongue (whetero, performed by men only)
18th and 19th centuries
The earliest Europeans to witness haka described them as being “vigorous” and “ferocious”. From their arrival in the early 19th century, Christian missionaries tried unsuccessfully to eradicate haka, along with other forms of Māori culture that they saw as conflicting with Christian beliefs and practice.
Modern haka
In modern times, various haka have been composed to be performed by women and even children. In some haka the men start the performance and women join in later. Haka are performed for various reasons: for welcoming distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements, occasions or funerals.
The 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team began a tradition by performing haka during an international tour. The common use of haka by the national rugby union team before matches, beginning with The Original All Blacks in 1905, has made one type of haka familiar.
The choreographed dance and chant popularized around the world by the All Blacks derives from “Ka Mate”, a brief haka previously intended for extemporaneous, non-synchronized performance, whose composition is attributed to Te Rauparaha (1760s–1849), a war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe. The “Ka Mate” haka is classified as a haka taparahi – a ceremonial haka performed without weapons. “Ka Mate” is about the cunning ruse Te Rauparaha used to outwit his enemies, and may be interpreted as “a celebration of the triumph of life over death”.
Specific legal challenges regarding the rights of the Ngāti Toa to be acknowledged as the authors and owners of “Ka Mate” were eventually settled in a Deed of Settlement between Ngāti Toa and the New Zealand Government and New Zealand Rugby Union agreed in 2009 and signed in 2012.
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Haka tuwah
Mods, kill this person. Kill them with hammers
True theory makes you uncomfortable about your beliefs
shoutouts to that one therapist who asked me if I knew what the phrase “don’t throw stones in a glass house” meant after I told him I feel like I’m losing my mind because I’m constantly surrounded by morons
Yessir it’s totally me being insecure about my intelligence and not the average American being a gullible dumbass being led into fascism, no sir
Hijacking the Megathread to introduce the concept of the Microthread to balance it out
Is that like where we all only post under this comment as its own minimega? That would be a good bit
Do we all reply to the first comment or just make it a really long single chain
Long chain, pretty colors
so how y’all doin?
P good
ate any beans recently?
I had peas with pasta for dinner. Do they count? :peanis:
great bit even
first
My relationship status:
❌single
❌voluntary celibate
❌literally unfuckable
✔️saving myself for Anne Hathaway
Hey, remember the time that Trump sent in the US Marshals to assassinate an alleged antifa man during the Portland BLM protests after the man shot and killed one of his dumb MAGA supporters? Hell, Trump was bragging about sending out the hit in his tweets and at the debate with Biden.
It’s gonna be a long 4 years.
part of me never recovered from the mental whiplash of libs going from
to
FUND the police Jack!
at his first SOTU
anyway I bring it up for people downplaying how bad another Trump term is gonna be, like the motherfucker was putting out mafia hits at the end of his last term and now he’s had 4 years to stew on his loss, getting indicted as a felon, and the assassination attempts. Shit’s gonna be rough.
Hes still incompetent, nearly a decade older and his brain is still wired to fixate on high cholesterol vibrating things.
There will be a lot of stupid and scary stuff but also funny/incompetent/wtf stuff.
And he has all organs of government and a SCOTUS that will rubber stamp anything while ruling by decree from the bench.
I saw printouts of Trump’s tweets on the dashboard of private security vehicles in 2020, I feel like it’s been glossed over slightly how much he had a hand in inspiring violence from chuds at that time. There were dozens of missing people related to protests that got little coverage as well, it seems likely it was worse than we even realize.
Pjs ON
Nightlight OFF
Knuckles CRACKEDFlip yeah it’s cant sleep tummy hurd time
Gogglesposting 🧲🥽🐈⬛💕
Chairman Goggles, working tirelessly to develop new napping techniques and discover how magnets work
A Song of Ice and Fire But Every Page Has The N Word On It by George Hard R Martin
one thing we’ve all forgotten during the trump era is just how much republicans focus group everything they say. Like the “military aged” part of this is complete nonsense, until you remember their whole thing is to run focus groups to see which phrases get people the most worked up. It’s such a deranged party, and they’re essentially built on the social media algorithm logic of A/B testing and figuring out what makes people the angriest. No wonder they’ve completely taken over facebook.
my whole room shaking from the party across the street
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No current struggle session discussion here on the new general megathread, i will ban you from the comm and remove your comment, have a good day/night :meow-coffee:
:sicko-haka: good mega
ok i pull up
ok i pull up
First
Ok I pull up
First
-
CVS didn’t have a phone charger or gatorade, but they did have a Santa statue in a novelty sombrero with maracas and a piñata.
Did my hair and I look really fucking cute right now
I need friends, I need to come to grips with whatever blend of neurospiciness has been wrecking my shit my whole life, I need therapy, I need to live in a society and have something useful and fulfilling to do so I don’t just get high and doom spiral about the state of the world and how I’m a disappointment to my parents
I wish it didn’t take a stupid sad blideo gaem story to break through the wall of caked-on whatever the fuck that separates me from emotional vulnerability at all other times. It’s made me lonely to not be able to be open, and even typing this right now there’s like a third of my brain telling me that this is a stupid embarassment. Crying, or trying to cry, is maddening. It’s shockingly close to the surface almost all the time these days, but when I want to let it out I can’t do it, like a sneeze that never comes. At this point my brain is just screaming delet this so I guess I should hit post.
The sad blideo gaem is While We Wait Here, by the way. Not a masterpiece but definitely the best I’ve ever seen anyone pull off the Playstation revival genre
scrolling through the mega posts i missed this evening really brightened my shit up after that mini panic attack, some ya’ll bringing your funny A game tonight. really fucking appreciate that shit comrades