Kapa Haka, and the Impact of Māori Mentors

Matua Rihari Walker with the Oxford Area School Kapa Haka group, performing at the 2015 Cultural Festival. Source: Oxford Area School.  

The opening haka of an All Blacks match is a source of national pride, and Poi E plays loud and proud on the radio. But what about behind the stadium, off the rugby field?  

Kapa haka is a performance, an art, a community, and a valuable kind of mentorship, unique to Aotearoa. 

When kapa haka was first performed on the national stage in the 1970s, kapa haka was a radical act of revitalisation, and it remains an incredibly powerful practice of celebration and performance. 

According to research by Te Rita Papesch, Māori scholar and kapa haka performer, historic urbanisation and cultural oppression has “made it increasingly difficult to carry out the most basic rituals and communal activities that informed and sustained our identity as tangata whenua.”   

Papesch feared the unique ability to perform pōwhiri, for example, was slipping away as older generations passed. 

Through kapa haka, according to Papesch, indigenous communities could sustain their ways of being Māori by moving performances of cultural identity off the marae.  

Creating a frame, within which the key components of ritual could be performed theatrically, was essential in bringing together Māori from all over Aotearoa. 

The popularity of kapa haka in New Zealand schools, the shared knowledge of waiata, the ability of Kiwi, Pākehā students to hum Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi, and sing to the radio version of Poi E, is the result of a deliberate pursuit of survival, and an intentional preservation of te ao Māori  performance and values. 

The welcome popularity of Māori performing arts in this century is no accident. The broader New Zealand society, the government, the policy makers, the funders, the school principals, the workplaces, still need a better understanding of kapa haka, beyond its use on SkyTV at an All Blacks game, or as the clip-on addition to public and corporate events. 

The extent to which the nation values kapa haka, outside of the All Blacks performing haka at a rugby match, often begins in primary schools, New Zealand classrooms, and early morning waiata before school assemblies. And in rural North Canterbury, where kapa haka is not funded or performed as it is in Christchurch City schools, a man named Rihari, with a guitar and a collection of songs, is responsible for bringing those waiata to the classroom. 

Rihari Walker grew up with kapa haka, and now he travels between schools, introducing them to the power and the mana of kapa haka performance. As a five-year-old boy, Rihari quickly found an identity in traditional performance. “It became my life”, he told Canta, and through kapa haka, Rihari connected with mentors who have changed his life. 

“I trained with the best,” said Rihari, who spent most of his youth performing with Te Kotahitanga kapa haka.  

He grew up singing, with a poi in one hand, learning to understand te reo Māori, and eventually, learning how to turn language into songs.  

Rihari is bringing kapa haka to the doorstep of Canterbury schools, and it has a profound impact on young people - especially the next generation of New Zealanders. 

Rihari has two young sons, who he introduced to kapa haka through their primary school cultural groups, and his work as a mentor and kapa haka leader began with a tiny primary school classroom and parent volunteer hours. 

When Rihari’s oldest son started learning kapa haka at school, he was working the night shift at a factory, and volunteered to spend time during the day with his son’s class. He told Canta, the students brought the excitement and the passion, and he brought “valuable experience with stage presence and guitaring”.  

The class went so well that the school principal recommended him to just about everyone in Canterbury, and rural Oxford Area School was one of the first schools where Rihari taught. 

Rihari wrote the Oxford students their own school haka, and he said that kapa haka should always be a unifying source of pride, something unique to each school, or each community. 

“Growing up in kapa haka you’re exposed to a whole Māori community,” said Rihari, and that community is a source of identity, and of pride.  

Rihari has composed 20 songs of his own, and said he has “always had tunes in [his] head”. Now composing hakas, he told Canta they have their own kind of musicality. 

The haka is about more than a challenge. It’s more than violence. The haka is art, and soul, and according to Rihari, in performing the haka “we stand strong with mana, we stand proud in our identity. The haka is about knowing who you are.” 

Rihari told Canta, performing the haka is “giving yourself to the universe”, and it takes proud, positive, mentorship to encourage that mindset in young boys, especially young, Pākehā men who are disconnected from Māori community culture. 

Teaching kapa haka rurally, especially in predominantly non-Māori classrooms, presents a distinct challenge; and there is a gap in understanding and appreciation to be bridged, before the skills of performance can be truly taught. 

But the challenge of extending kapa haka to communities beyond the marae is part of what Rihari loves most, as much as “having fun, and cracking jokes!” 

“I take my mentorship quite seriously,” he told Canta.  

“I see they have more potential than they’re showing.” 

Rihari takes care to give the nervous but talented singer a lead in the waiata, or the disruptive but hardworking boy a role in the haka, and he says that kapa haka grounds young students who are still learning who they are. It builds identity, mana, and responsibility, and according to Rihari, “a month might go by, and they’re a completely different person. They’re confident, grounded.”  

Seeing the change in young students, and the impact of kapa haka on generations of young students, is what keeps Rihari in the classroom.  

The wairua, the te ao Māori spirit, or soul, is what defines kapa haka. It is the souls of individuals, coming together as one, in one performance, one shared value, one shared goal. It is generational, and according to Rihari, as primary students move up through the school and become leaders, “you can see that power has transferred. They lead the school now, and I have to keep up with that, for new generations.” 

Rihari has fast become the same mentor that he admired so much when he was a student himself, staring at the haka with stars in his eyes. Through kapa haka, Rihari found his role models, and he told Canta, “I carry a little piece of them all in me. They taught me everything.” 

According to E-Tangata author Linda Waimarie Nikora, “when we perform kapa haka, we are performing te ao Māori into existence.” 

Nikora said, every time kapa haka is performed, witnessed, and celebrated, “I’m looking to learn what sort of world our people are choosing to bring into existence. Tūhoe will do it in a certain way. Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-ā- Apanui, and other rōpu, will do it in another way, and draw on different traditions and histories.” 

Kapa Haka is far from one-size-fits-all. It is a lifeblood, shaped by history, myth, and music, and it is worth more to each new generation, an emphatic connection to mentors who have passed, and ancestors who fade further into history.