Embodying Idenity

Haka has historically been involved in debate surrounding its cultural impact in the world as it relates to the Maori tradition. Questions of cultural appropriation and excessive 'replication' of the tradition have quickly been shut down by the media and various social groups defending the cultural significance of Haka.

The Haka tradition has been shaped by centuries of ancient values and beliefs. Though the tradition has had a lasting impact throughout the world, many hold fast to the idea that this cultural practice has been culturally ‘stolen’ or replicated in an improper fashion. Considering Benjamin Whorf’s notion of “habitual thought” and Pierre Bourdieu’s of “habitus,” the replication of cultural traditions is relevant to the context of Maori culture. As Urban elaborates in Joan Gross’s Speaking in Other Voices, “...that replication is most likely to occur when the original represents itself as detached from the originator”(2001). Charles Springwood further elaborates on this phenomenon in his article ‘Reimagining the Maori Haka’, “Performed by teams often comprised of mostly Pākehā, or white NewZealanders, the haka seemed to me to be an example of, at the very least, cultural appropriation” (2018). In 1979, members of a Māori activist group He Taua confronted a group of college drunken students who dressed up and milked the Haka dance. What defends the practice of this dance, as with the All Blacks national rugby team, is New Zealand's valued motto ‘One Nation, Two People’ to establish unity rather than racial dissonance or replication with the Haka tradition.