Wednesday, October 07, 2015




Americans must not do traditional New Zealand haka war dance

An American college football team who started performing the haka made famous by New Zealand's All Blacks have stopped the pre-game ritual after backlash from New Zealanders.

The Arizona Wildcats, from the University of Arizona, have been forced to stop the war dance after it was slammed by critics who said it was insulting to the tradition of the Maori, the New Zealand Herald reports.

In the video the Wildcats team, clad in red, perform a haka at a much faster pace than it is usually completed and the player leading the team does not seem to pronounce the words properly during the rendition.

An Arizona Athletics spokesman told the newspaper it wasn't planned to come across as disrespectful, and he apologised if it caused offence.

'The Arizona football program has a strong lineage of Polynesian student-athletes, and in 2009, a group of players wished to share this aspect of their culture with their team mates and community,' the spokesman told the NZ Herald.

'As a result, the Ka Mate haka became part of the program's on-field pregame preparation starting that year.

'Even though that intent remains the same today, we've been made aware that a segment of the population is unhappy that the haka is being performed. As a result, we have decided to discontinue the activity.

SOURCE

Are the Kiwis being racist?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Many indigenous (meaning they conquered the previous inhabitants) people are extremely protective of their "culture". One reason is that in many cases that is all the have and most use it commercially to sell goods and native "culture shows". It is ridiculous to chastise someone for performing something that you perform for money unless you want something for your intellectual property which could not be applied in this case.

MDH

Bird of Paradise said...

What about the Watusi?

Anonymous said...

I agree with NZ that their traditions are being violated. If you can't ask first and learn to do it right then don't do it because it really will be offensive.

Anonymous said...

MDH 2:00 - in the case of New Zealand ("Land of the Long White Cloud"), I understand there were no previous human inhabitants before the Maoris arrived in their boats.

Alpha Skua said...

Soon enough the eco-freaks will want these navtive to go since these back to nature twats think humanity is a cancer We do have cancer on earth its called Enviromentalism