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WorldRugby Haka time at the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2017 semi-final

i like how they must have said to the white menbers at some point “yeah becky yall gon do this too get up we all have to learn”

Actually most New Zealanders (white and non white) learn this as children at school and with their friends. Like Kiwi culture’s really a mix of indigenous and non-indigenous elements so there’s not that much cultural segregation as you would have in the states

I’m white as a chicken and mayo sandwich and I learned two or three haka at school. If I’d joined the kapa haka group it would have been more and certainly wouldn’t have been the only white person doing so.

#also if I was the opposite team I would be “WELL WE ARE FUCKED :)”

That is 1000% the point of the Haka. Here’s a really good explanation of it.

I’ve never seen women doing the Haka before and holy shit I’m in love

When I did kapa haka at school, lo these many years ago now (ok about 15), I was taught that it was tikanga in most iwi that women didn’t do the haka (as men don’t do the karanga at pōwhiri). That seems to be changing, which is neat, but it’s very much something that’s up to wahine Māori to change and Pākehā women to follow their lead on, like the varying tikanga on women speaking on the marae. 

(but also v agreed that it is incredibly common for Pākehā in NZ to have learned at least some elements of Māori performing arts/kapa haka, if they’re under 40; if a white person in NZ has never done that they’re either an adult immigrant or exclusively attended posh private schools, and even the last might not apply these days. The average non-Māori-speaking NZer understands 80-100 words of te reo. American norms of segregation do not apply.) 

There are still some pretty racist towns in New Zealand where they don’t teach any Māori culture even in public schools (mostly rural towns in the South Island). I didn’t learn any Te Reo until I moved to Wellington, and my brother who only just left my old high school had pretty much the same experience.

We’re a lot better than the US, but there’s still more cultural segregation than there should be.

I’m married to someone who grew up in a rural South Island town, so yeah, I know. But ‘rural South Island towns’ only represent about 10% of the NZ population, so this is an exception, not a norm; the experience for the overwhelming majority of Kiwi kids is one where they get at least some exposure to te reo and tikanga Māori as part of the public education system. 

(For non-NZers, rural North Island towns are often more Māori than the cities, not less; the majority of the pre-colonisation Māori population lived in the northern half of the North Island.) 

That captain looks like a female Dwayne The Rock Johnson and I love her.

My primary school was very big on Maori culture, everybody learned a bit and we also had Maori Club if you wanted to learn more. It was long enough ago that girls Did Not Do The Haka, but one day at practice the boys just weren’t in the mood and were being very low-energy. So our (awesome!) teacher said that we girls should show them how it was meant to be done.

We’d never formally been taught a haka, but of course we’d been there for all the boys’ practice sessions, so we knew it. I swear half of us girls in Maori Club had just been waiting for our chance, and the rest were swept up in the enthusiasm. We roared. We stamped so hard the gym floor vibrated. We got right up in their faces and had them backing away and when we finished there was a breathless pause… and then the teacher just said, “See? Do that.” XD XD XD