Mau rakau remaining true to its roots

The cultural performance manager at Waitangi Treaty Grounds says Waitangi Day displays of traditional Maori martial arts will have all the integrity of the real thing.

The discipline known as mau rakau, meaning "to bear a weapon" such as taiaha and patu, was once in danger of becoming a forgotten art: "But I don't believe it will ever become extinct now, it's too strong," Mori Rapana said.

On Tuesday, February 5, the first day of the Waitangi festival, eight members of the Treaty Grounds' performance group will demonstrate mau rakau at intervals in front of the carved Whare Runanga (meeting house).

"We will be showing snippets of our longer performances but they will still maintain the structure and integrity of the ancient art of mau rakau," Mr Rapana said.

Once central to warriors' combat training, the practice now also resides in the modern performance convention that helped save some Maori arts and practices from dying out.

As with tai chi and other Asian martial arts, every action, movement and weapon-hold in mau rakau is designed to strengthen and make the body more flexible, as much as to defend or attack.

The resurgence of interest in Maori weaponry skills has seen it recognised internationally as a martial art, just as kapa haka is recognised on the world entertainment stage, Mr Rapana said.

Mau rakau is one of the traditional arts performed in daily sessions at Waitangi Treaty Grounds.

A former kapa haka teacher and national champion, Mr Rapana took over the cultural performance reins at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds last October, before which he had been working as a tutor at the University of Auckland. He designed the show that has become a popular part of the Waitangi visitors' experience.

He was a senior member of the 2009 national kapa haka champions Te Waka Huia.