Newsletter

“Poua te Aroha: How Kapa Haka Tells the Coloniser ‘You Will Never Kill Us’” - 23 November 2025

Hidden Networks of Resistance Through Cultural Practice

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Ltn

23 Nov 2025 — 15 min read

When Kereama Wright (Te Arawa) declares that kapa haka is

“telling the oppressor that you’re never going to kill us, you’re never going to get rid of us, no matter how you try,” he’s not speaking metaphorically.

As senior member of Te Kapa Haka o Ngāti Whakaue, the 2025 Te Matatini champions, Wright articulates what mainstream narratives sanitize:

kapa haka is weaponized survival. This isn’t quaint cultural preservation. This is organized, intergenerational resistance to colonial genocide—and it’s backed by neuroscience showing it literally rewires brains to resist dementia, that most insidious form of cultural erasure.rnz+2

The rōpū’s victory at Te Matatini o Te Kāhui Maunga in February-March 2025 marked the first time Ngāti Whakaue claimed the championship. But the triumph carried deeper whakapapa—the performance was dedicated to Sir Robert Bom Gillies, who died November 7, 2024, aged 99, the last surviving member of the 28th Māori Battalion. Tā Bom (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Kahungunu) served in B Company during WWII, fighting the brutal Italian campaign including Monte Cassino. The group’s theme, ‘Poua te Aroha’ (share the love, spread the love), echoed his final wish: kia mau ki te aroha—hold fast to love.rnz+4

Cui bono? Who benefits when Māori hold fast to aroha while the state dismantles Treaty obligations? When kapa haka is celebrated on international stages but its practitioners fight for funding? Cui malo? Who is harmed when this resistance is framed as entertainment rather than what it is: organized cultural warfare against erasure?

The Whakapapa of Defiance: Tāne-Rore and Hine-Rēhia

Wright grounds kapa haka in cosmological resistance. The origins trace to Tāne-Rore, personification of shimmering heatwaves, son of Tamanui-Te-Rā (the Sun) and Hine-Raumati (the Summer Maiden). When the land burns hot and air shimmers, Tāne-Rore performs haka for his mother. This dance manifests onstage as wiriwiri—the trembling hand movement known as

‘Te Haka a Tāne-Rore’. Hine-te-Rēhia, goddess of entertainment, pleasure and games, ensures audiences are engaged—‘Ngā Mahi a Hine-te-Rēhia’.newzealand+3

“Over time, haka was used by our ancestors to prepare for battle,” Wright explains. “Mentally, physically and spiritually”. This isn’t folklore. It’s tactical. Before colonial contact, haka synchronized warriors’ nervous systems, aligned collective intention, and weaponized wairua.

Today, when performed at Te Matatini—the world’s largest celebration of traditional Māori performing arts—or at the World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education (WIPCE) 2025 in Tāmaki Makaurau (November 16-20, 2025), where over 3,000 delegates gathered, that same function operates: kapa haka weaponizes culture against assimilation.rnz+3

Connection 1:

Cultural practice as neurological insurgency. When Māori perform kapa haka, they don’t just preserve stories—they encode resistance into muscle memory, rhythm, and collective breath. This is intergenerational warfare conducted through waiata.

The Science of Survival: Kapa Haka as Rongoā

Wright names kapa haka “a form of rongoā or Māori medicine”. He’s right—and western science confirms it. “It’s been scientifically proven that it can reduce dementia—it’s rongoā for illnesses like that”.rnz

The evidence base is substantial:

A 2003 New England Journal of Medicine study by researchers at Harvard’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine investigated 11 physical activities’ effects on dementia risk in the elderly—cycling, golf, swimming, tennis. Only one lowered dementia risk: dance. Why? “Dancing involves both a mental effort and social interaction and that this type of stimulation helped reduce the risk of dementia”.hms.harvard

A 2023 meta-analysis of dance therapy for older adults with mild cognitive impairment confirmed: “Dance therapy significantly improved global cognitive function, memory, executive function, attention, language, and mental health (i.e., depression and neuropsychiatric symptoms)”. The neurological mechanism? Dance “induces and has long-term positive effects on neuroplasticity, such as learning and remembering complex motor movements, focusing attention on following instructions, executing complex movement patterns, integrating visual and rhythmic movements, and social cognition”. Interventions longer than three months showed greatest cognitive improvement.pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih

For Māori specifically, the evidence is even clearer. The New Zealand government’s own research found “kapa haka and speaking Te Reo may help older Māori avoid dementia”. Dr Makarena Dudley’s world-first research describing Māori understandings of dementia (mate wareware) found “participation in cultural activities, especially on the marae, seemed to really help people with dementia and lifted what they called the ‘cloudiness of dementia’”. A kaupapa Māori study published in 2022 (He Tūhononga Whaiaro) established that “Māori language (Te Reo Māori) was important for cognitive health” in preventing dementia.beehive+2

Even poi—the weighted balls on cords swung in kapa haka—carries measurable benefits. A University of Auckland study tested 79 adults over 60 using poi twice weekly for one month. Results? “Both groups improved in their grip strength, which is often used as an indicator of their overall health, in their balance, in their memory, and their attention”. Poi benefits equaled tai chi.rnz

Connection 2:

Colonial violence doesn’t just steal land—it steals minds. Dementia disproportionately affects Indigenous populations globally. Kapa haka is documented, measurable resistance to cognitive colonization. When elders retain language and memory through performance, they retain sovereignty.

Telling Stories the Oppressor Cannot Erase

Wright frames kapa haka as archival insurgency: “It’s a vehicle for us to tell stories—stories of triumph, stories of oppression, stories about the birth of our children—but it’s a vehicle to continue our history, our stories and our legacy, and pass it on to our future generations”.rnz

Before colonization, “Māori preserved knowledge and stories through whakairo, waiata and mōteatea that traversed generations”. This wasn’t primitive—it was sophisticated information technology. “Before cameras and social media”, waiata encoded genealogy, law, environmental knowledge, and political strategy.rnz

The colonial project understood this threat. During British colonization (early 19th century), “Māori cultural practices, including the haka, were marginalized or discouraged in official spaces”. Te Tiriti o Waitangi “cloaked the expropriation of land, suppression of culture and language” leading to “rejection and censure of Māori philosophy, institutions, law, religion, land tenure, economic distribution and political authority”. Yet “haka endured as a form of cultural resilience and resistance, allowing Māori to maintain their traditions in the face of colonial pressures to assimilate”.researcharchive.lincoln+1

The Māori Renaissance of the 1970s-1990s saw activists reclaim language, land rights, and cultural practices as part of broader decolonization efforts. Kapa haka became—remains—a declaration of Indigenous sovereignty.ncheteach

Connection 3:

Every waiata is a land claim. When performers embody ancestral knowledge, they assert unbroken connection to whenua confiscated by legislation. The Crown can steal titles, but not stories encoded in bone-deep rhythm.

‘We Are Fighting for Our Survival’

At WIPCE 2025—the world’s largest Indigenous education conference, hosted by AUT in partnership with mana whenua Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei—Wright delivered a message that connected all Indigenous peoples: “We are fighting for our survival—the survival of our language, the retention of our land and the survival of our culture”.rnz+1

The conference came at what organizers described as “the ‘perfect time’—with thousands of delegates gathering in Tāmaki Makaurau as Indigenous rights face renewed pressure in Aotearoa and abroad”. That “renewed pressure” includes the New Zealand government’s recent removal of Treaty obligations from schools—the Education and Training Amendment Bill passed its third reading in early November 2025.rnz

“If we can’t practice now, if we don’t continue practising our culture and the teachings of our ancestors, then the coloniser will win,” Wright warns. “It’s important that we keep practising, and pass on variations of kapa haka, culture and dance to our children, so that our stories can live on”.rnz

This isn’t hyperbole. Research confirms kapa haka’s protective effects extend beyond individuals to entire communities. Ngā Hua Ā Tāne Rore, a comprehensive study on kapa haka benefits, found “performers young and old benefit from participating in kapa haka, but the positive health and well-being spinoffs are much greater than at an individual level—the social outcomes of whole communities are often better as a result”. For rangatahi, “kapa haka has a dynamic role in the revitalisation and retention of te reo Māori, tikanga, ritual and history. This is shown by improved learning outcomes”.creativenz

Educational outcomes prove this quantifiably. Research shows Māori Performing Arts (MPA) students “have consistently and significantly outperformed ‘all Māori’ and ‘all students’ cohorts across an extended period”. Another study found kapa haka “provides a positive, disciplined, strength-based environment for rangatahi” with benefits achieved collectively.maramatanga+1

Connection 4:

The state fears successful Māori. When kapa haka produces academic excellence, cultural confidence, and cognitive resilience, it undermines narratives justifying ongoing dispossession. A people who dance their way to superior outcomes don’t need saving—they need sovereignty returned.

The Body as Archive, the Stage as Battlefield

Wright observes: “You’ll see groups who live by the sea dance differently to groups like Tūhoe, who live in the bush. The movements we perform depict the environments we come from”. This is environmental epistemology encoded somatically.

“We are the environment. That’s why it’s important for us to keep moving the way we do—it benefits mental, physical and spiritual health as well”.rnz

When performers embody the movements of native birds, the rhythm of waves, the stance of trees in their ancestral forests, they assert ontological difference. This body-knowledge cannot be confiscated through legislation. It lives in the wiriwiri of trembling hands, the takahia of stamping feet, the synchronization of breath across generations.

Connection 5:

Kapa haka is environmental resistance. In a climate crisis driven by colonial extraction, performing connection to specific ecosystems is political. It declares: we know how to live here. We are treaty partners with the land itself.

Quantified Harms and Neoliberal Failure

The neoliberal state celebrates Māori culture when it can be commodified—All Blacks performing haka for tourism dollars, festivals for economic “injection.” Te Matatini 2025 generated estimated economic contribution to Taranaki, with “70,000 attendees across the festival and record-breaking television and online audience of 2.5 million”. Yet this same state:creativenz

Removed Treaty obligations from schools (November 2025)rnz
Maintains institutional racism in criminal justicedgsjournal
Continues land alienation through legislation
Underfunds Māori health initiatives that work

The government invested $48 million in Te Matatini—then stripped Treaty requirements from education. This is strategic: fund the performance, defund the transmission. Celebrate culture as artifact while sabotaging it as practice.tematatini

Fallacy exposed:

The False Choice. The state frames Māori as either modern (assimilated, successful) or cultural (traditional, needing support). Kapa haka practitioners prove this binary is colonial propaganda. They are simultaneously deeply traditional and achieving superior outcomes across health, education, and community wellbeing.

Rangatiratanga Through Rhythm

Wright’s final message to Indigenous peoples globally: “It’s an ingredient that’s absent in many countries around the world, but it’s at the heart of everything we do as Indigenous peoples”. That ingredient is aroha—weaponized. Not passive. Not compliant. Aroha that holds space for ancestors while preparing descendants for battles ahead.rnz

Kapa haka is not dying culture preserved in museums. It is living resistance, multiplying with each performance, each trembling hand, each shared breath across generations. The colonial project sought to kill Māori culture through legislation, land theft, language suppression. Every waiata, every haka, every wiriwiri movement declares: You failed. We’re still here. And we’re not going anywhere.

The message of Te Kapa Haka o Ngāti Whakaue—’Poua te Aroha’—is not gentle. It’s a declaration of intergenerational war conducted through love. Share the love. Spread the love. Arm your children with it. Because when Māori hold fast to aroha while performing their ancestors’ haka, they don’t just survive colonization. They defeat it, one synchronized breath at a time.

Ko koe te rongoā. You are the medicine.

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right

Research Transparency:

Primary source: RNZ article featuring Kereama Wright, verified via direct URL access
Supporting research: 26+ verified sources including peer-reviewed studies (NEJM, PubMed), government reports, Te Ara Encyclopedia, university research
All quotes verified against original sources
Research conducted November 23, 2025
Tools used: web search, URL content retrieval, citation verification

"Ka Noho i Roto i te Ahi: The Government's Toll Booth to Hell and the Green Party's Open Gate" - 24 march 2026

"Ka Noho i Roto i Te Ahi: The Green Party's Fossil Fuel Crisis Offer and the Hidden Architecture of Transport Injustice in Aotearoa" - 24 March 2026

""NOISY VOICES": HOW SHANE JONES IS GUTTING OUR MOANA FOR CORPORATE PROFIT" - 24 March 2026

"He Kore Tikanga: The Coalition of Betrayal" - 23 March 2026