The proliferation of haka team-building workshops for corporate clients across the globe has raised eyebrows among Māori cultural experts. The classes can be as short as 10-30 minutes and sometimes delivered by instructors with no Māori heritage. If conducted in New Zealand, most would breach the Haka Ka Mate Attribution Act 2014, Tom Dillane reports.
It was a reminder of home, but not a welcome one for Kiwi expat Eva Hayward, living in Sweden.
The haka is designed to be an arresting sensory experience – but this was that for all the wrong reasons.
Her brother had sent her a video of a haka workshop he had attended in Poland.
“He said the class was being treated like a yoga class or a place for men looking for ‘a masculine outlet’,” Hayward said.
“I don’t have Māori heritage but I’m a New Zealander, these traditions are a part of my culture and seeing them being used in corporate settings in other countries as little games and things to almost laugh at is offensive.”
The video led her to scan the internet where she quickly found more of the businesses she found so objectionable. The Authentic Haka Experience based in Leiden, the Netherlands. Haka Works at Wimbledon, London, in Britain. Haka Time at Pompano Beach, Florida, in the United States.
The Kaisen Team Building company with offices in Barcelona and Madrid has haka team-building as an option for corporate sessions alongside other activities such as “Defuse the Bomb”, “Crazy Helmets” and “Paellas Contest”.
Hayward was aghast at the proliferation of these almost identical businesses across the globe.
“The language they use in some of these ads is unbelievable ‘authentic New Zealand Māori Warriors’, ‘in-house genuine Māori warriors’. It sounds like something from 100 years ago,” she said.
The Authentic Haka Experience in the Netherlands says on its website that it is run by a group of New Zealand rugby players playing professionally for local clubs in the Netherlands.
The business says it “travels all over Europe” offering team-building workshops for corporates. It has run sessions for global brands such as Heineken and large corporations such as Deloitte, Johnson & Johnson and ING bank.
“All our haka trainers are from New Zealand and are of Maori and Polynesian descent. This makes our haka workshops unique and authentic!” it declares on its website.
Hayward isn’t the only one who felt uncomfortable by the phenomenon of corporate haka team-building.
Canterbury University associate professor of health Jeremy Hapeta (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Huia and Ngāti Pareraukawa) is an expert in indigenous and Māori sport and its impact on development and wellbeing.
“Looks like a group of professional rugby players over there who appear to be ... cashing in on something there’s a lot of curiosity around in Europe,” he said after examining the Authentic Haka Experience’s online presence.
“It just seems opportunistic to, to jump in, do a little energiser as they say, to boost morale at a conference or at a gathering where it just feels a wee bit hit and run ... quite superficial.”
In particular, the length of the sessions raised Hapeta’s eyebrows. Authentic Haka Experience offers workshops from 20 minutes to two hours, as well as a “virtual experience” across Zoom.
A competing business in the Netherlands, Haka Workshop, offers a 10-30 minute “Short and impactful: Super energiser” option it claims is “perfect for in-between meetings or as a kickoff for your event”.
“I don’t know how much depth they can actually fit into a half an hour or an hour, but I suspect, having run various workshops on haka in my time, that to be able to get to the real depths of authenticity in that timeframe is ... not really possible,” Hapeta said.
I suspect – having run workshops on haka in my time – that to get to the real depths of authenticity in that time frame is not really possible.
“You know, ‘we’re just gonna fly in, throw some words and actions at them and grab a whole heap of money, and fly out again’.”
But the founder of the Authentic Haka Experience, Storm Carroll, has passionately defended the motives and authenticity of the Netherlands business he started 10 years ago.
Born in Hawke’s Bay, Carroll moved to Europe 15 years ago to pursue a professional rugby career, then “fell in love” and ended up married with three kids. He has lived in the Netherlands ever since – part of their national rugby team and coaching their national junior squads.
Carroll says he started Authentic Haka Experience when the Rugby World Cup was televised for the first time ever in the Netherlands and “people would ring my rugby club asking about the Māori culture and the haka”.
Carroll says one of the motivations for establishing and maintaining his corporate haka workshop business was the presence of two other local businesses, Haka Workshop and Haka Man, which he alleges “give haka workshops and are 100% Dutch dance trainers”.
“Because these companies are operating, I feel it is my duty as a Māori to compete against them until they no longer exist. Then I can happily retire Authentic Haka,” he said.
“This really made me push to create Authentic Haka to give the Netherlands people a more real experience from a real Māori.”
Carroll also defends the short sessions offered by Authentic Haka Workshop as a necessary practicality. He says it’s what his corporate clients want – despite how he may feel about the need for more context.
“Ninety-nine per cent of clients who reach out just want an uncomfortable, out-of-the box experience for their colleagues,” Carroll says.
“The haka fits perfectly into that category ... They unfortunately do not want an in-depth cultural experience. In saying this, I always give my clients a history lesson at the start of the workshop.”
They unfortunately do not want an in-depth cultural experience.
Hapeta told the Herald if these businesses were operating in Aotearoa New Zealand, they would breach the Haka Ka Mate Attribution Act 2014. The act dictates that there be an acknowledgement on the website – or during the corporate sessions – that Te Rauparaha was the composer of the Ka Mate haka and a chief of Ngāti Toa Rangatira.
This right of attribution applies to any publication of Ka Mate for commercial purposes.
Carroll said he totally agrees with this and it is an oversight that will be “rectified ASAP” on the company’s website.
He also backs criticism of fake moko drawn on clients’ faces and occasionally seen on the social media pages of haka workshop businesses – a practice he does not offer or encourage.
Carroll said he has occasionally experienced clients showing up with fake moko and he has objected, even threatening to cancel the workshop if they were not removed.
Another company, Catalyst Global, which operates in 90 countries and offers 256 different team building workshops to licensees, says it is reviewing its “Haka Action” workshop after being contacted by the Herald.
A Catalyst Global spokeswoman said a New Zealand licensee had previously avoided the Haka Action workshop – possibly because the Kiwi licensee felt some cultural unease around the programme.
The spokeswoman said the company will “affirm our commitment to reviewing the product to ensure that it is culturally appropriate. With the key learning being about the value of performing together as one, using the haka as an example. We could explore using another performing art to bring across the same message”.
Part of this review will be the length of the Haka Action workshop, which Catalyst Global is concerned is too short.
The New Zealand-based Catalyst spokeswoman said the materials supplied to licensees for the Haka Action programme needed to be made “tighter” and the tutorial used would be shown to the local iwi to be guided on how to improve it – or whether to abandon the programme entirely.
Massey University professor Rochelle Stewart-Withers, who is an expert on the impact of sport in developing countries and indigenous populations, suggests there is a form of deception or evasion in the establishment of these tutorials on the other side of the world away from scrutiny.
“People using this to team-build in a foreign country. They are maybe using it in Sweden. Well, why are they [corporate clients] not using their own indigenous peoples?” Stewart-Withers asked.
“Like, why are they not using some sort of system or process that belongs to the Sami people? Because they know that they shouldn’t.
“Use your own cultural kind of systems of like, enhancing mana, because that’s what team-building is about, right? Enhancing mana. So why don’t you go to your own space and look for your own processes and systems and things to do ... that mahi?”
She wonders also if those running the tutorials would have the gumption to explain the business ventures to their own whānau back in New Zealand.
“You know, are they [haka workshop operators] disconnected from whānau? If you had to come back and stand up in Aotearoa in front of people and explain why you think this is a good thing, could you actually do that hand on heart and ... not feel a bit ashamed about it?”
Stewart-Withers also challenges the notion that simply having people of Māori descent running the corporate workshops makes them authentic and culturally relevant.
“It just looks like a fun time, right? And then if we say, ‘we’ve got some Māori people with some Pacifica people, whatever. So we’ve got some brown folk delivering that so it makes it okay’.
“But it’s kind of like: who gave the permissions to be able to do that? So it just makes it all really superficial and shallow. Is it authentic just because you have a brown person doing it? I think it’s deeply problematic.”
Hapeta goes further in specifying that there ideally should be someone who descends from the Ngāti Toa Rangatira iwi, where the Ka Mate haka was originally composed, when instructing new people on how to perform it.
Carroll insists that unlike other similar international businesses, all his trainers are Māori and come from iwi all over Aotearoa including Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāpuhi, Te Āti Awa and others.
He says if there is a real issue with the haka Ka Mate from the Ngāti Toa Rangatira iwi being used in his workshops, he will abandon it for another kind of haka Carroll has worked up himself.
“If this is a real issue, I will be more than happy not to use it, to keep my people happy. I do have a haka I created for Authentic Haka,” the founder of Authentic Haka Experience said.
“Please keep in mind, I am a very proud Māori and love sharing my culture with others and creating an environment for young Kiwi boys who come over to play rugby for a season [to stay] connected to Aotearoa.”
Brothers Robert and Frank Bouman founded a competing haka workshop business in the Netherlands called Haka Workshop. They openly admit they are not Māori and say they “realise the delicate nature of teaching someone anything of a culture different than their own”.
“We are no experts on Māori culture nor do we claim to be. We do humbly and with great respect teach about what small part of haka we can, that was taught to us by the late Whaea Wai Turoa during her many teachings that she gave in the Netherlands and other parts of Europe,” Bouman said.
The woman referenced, Whaea Wai Turoa, has an online presence as a “wisdom teacher” and a “Māori Shaman” who spent 30 years travelling the world. Bouman says Turoa was a descendant of Te Rauparaha and his company always acknowledges the history and relevance of the story behind the Ka Mate haka, “just as she taught us”.
Turoa gave the individuals behind Haka Workshop the approval to teach the haka under “strict conditions”, Bouman said, “although we realise she cannot speak for the entire Māori culture”.
The Herald was unable to reach the other Netherlands-based business, HakaMan, alleged to have no Māori instructors.
Ultimately, Stewart-Withers accepts there is a curiosity about Māori culture and the haka, promoted across the globe via the All Blacks. But she says this fixation often obscures the more confronting aspects of the modern Māori experience.
“People just get to cherry-pick what is culturally okay,” she says.
“‘I don’t want to hear about, you know, the hīkoi [recent protest march to Parliament]. I don’t want to hear about co-governance or any of that stuff, I don’t want to hear about land claims or poverty or prison rates’ stuff like that. But I want to have a little performance, ‘I just love that haka’.
“Don’t just be interested in the exciting neat and tidy stuff, be interested in the dark stuff. You know, all that actually uncomfortable stuff as well.”
Tom Dillane is an Auckland-based journalist covering local government and crime as well as sports investigations. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is deputy head of news.
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