Something to watch tonight: Monday 14 July

The Haka Party Incident (Wolfe, 2024)

While we are on the sub­ject of RNZ, I notice that one of the best recent loc­al doc­u­ment­ar­ies was now stream­ing on the RNZ website.

When I reviewed the film earli­er this year, I was sur­prised that the nation­al radio broad­caster would be giv­en such a prom­in­ent cred­it but now it makes much more sense. RNZ has spent much of the last ten years try­ing to work out how to become more than just a radio ser­vice with a web­site attached and invest­ing in pro­duc­tions like The Haka Party Incident is a nat­ur­al follow-up to award-winning doc­u­ment­ar­ies like NZ Wars: The Story of Ruapekapeka.

The RNZ web­site has had a “Video” tab in the nav­ig­a­tion for months but I’ve nev­er invest­ig­ated it prop­erly until now. To my sur­prise – and my chag­rin as a sup­posed mem­ber of the RNZ whānau – I real­ise that there is a lot of con­tent sit­ting behind that link.

The Auckland University Engineering Society had been indul­ging in drunk­en buf­foon­ery to cel­eb­rate Capping Week for dec­ades but by 1979 the prac­tice of dress­ing up in plastic grass skirts and paint­ing offens­ive slo­gans on their bod­ies before going on a down­town Auckland pub crawl had tested the patience of Māori and the ‘“rad­ic­al” group He Taua decided that some­thing had to be done.

My review is only eight minutes long and is a decent intro­duc­tion to the sub­ject but, to be hon­est, you could just as eas­ily jump right in:

The response post-fracas was inter­est­ing. Most pāke­hā couldn’t under­stand what the fuss was about. New Zealand had been mak­ing fun of Māori cul­ture for dec­ades – there are some con­tem­por­ary tele­vi­sion clips fea­tur­ing beloved Kiwi comedi­ans in this doc­u­ment­ary that will make your hair curl – and that was just how we expressed our affec­tion at the time, by being pat­ron­ising and dismissive.

The state – already lean­ing towards author­it­ari­an­ism under Muldoon – had to take action and did. He Taua were charged with the highly politi­cised crime of riot.

He Taua weren’t part of the uni­ver­sity com­munity. Evidently, Māori at Auckland University had been approached to take action against the engin­eers’ haka but had chosen not to rock the boat so it was left to so-called rad­ic­al outsiders.

At the open meet­ing in the quad, seni­or Māori lead­ers (includ­ing people from the Race Relations Conciliator’s office), urged calm and reconciliation.

The engin­eers didn’t know what they had done wrong and – as Wolfe’s doc­u­ment­ary demon­strates so depress­ingly – many of them still don’t.

Where to watch The Haka Party Incident

Aotearoa: Streaming on rnz.co.nz (free) or rent­al at AroVision

Australia: Not cur­rently available

Canada: Not cur­rently available

Ireland: Not cur­rently available

India: Not cur­rently available

USA: Not cur­rently available

UK: Not cur­rently available