Haka & Socialization

Why Robots Can’t Haka: Skilled Performance and Embodied Knowledge in the Maori Haka by Mingon & Sutton elaborates the synchronous, emotional, and cultural wealth that the haka chant has developed within the Maori culture. Mingon and Sutton investigate why replacing the historical performance, used in welcome ceremonies, protests, funerals, sporting events, and several other contexts, with pre-coordinated ‘Robot Maori Haka’ machines is degrading to interpersonal communication, bonding, and overall ‘embodied cognition’ of human expression. The article suggests the idea that intruding on the 'fullness'(or, richness) of the Haka chant beyond a verbal aspect is putrid to the acknowledgement of colonial-political violence; 

“By separating mind and memory from body, society, and environment, Western internalism in its applied forms underwrote active colonial damage, in justifying colonial resistance to indigenous socialization into community narrative practices, systems of norms, and embodied skills.”

Henceforth, colonial resistance is just one of many foundational cultural attributes that this ‘posture dance’ allows the Maori people to soulfully express. The article also considers the effects on new audiences, the shared history associated with the performance, and even the sensorimotor and cooperative skills that haka performers develop in their practice. In conclusion, the authors argue that utilizing RMHs would create an ‘impoverished’ idea of what constitutes human culture.

 

Pictured: Hōne Heke, a highly influential Māori rangatira (chief) of the Ngāpuhi iwi (tribe) and a war leader in northern New Zealand