In May 1979, young Māori activists of the group He Taua confronted a bunch of Auckland University engineering students in their common room as they prepared for their traditional annual capping week lark – flash-mob haka parodies around the campus and the inner city while dressed in grass skirts, their faces and bodies painted with crude slogans. The violence left a few of the students requiring stitches and hospital treatment. It left seven of the activists doing four months of periodic detention and one on probation after being found guilty of rioting and assault. Some complained of being beaten in custody.
The capping week haka party, which had been done by engineering students for decades, was never done again.
Originally staged by the Auckland Theatre Company in 2021, The Haka Party Incident, by writer-director Katie Wolfe, used verbatim accounts of the events and its aftermath. It has toured the country to wide acclaim. Now Wolfe has followed with a feature documentary, which is built mostly on contemporary interviews as well as archive footage and a sideline of genuine haka history.
As such, it feels more a companion piece to the play than standalone documentary. The time capsule of activist and student politics is mildly intriguing. But its unquestioning approach to interviewees’ mostly passive accounts can make it frustrating. The film soft-pedals the actual violence – according to trial reports, some of He Taua arrived with weapons. The film’s marketing line: “The last New Zealand War took place in 1979″, which manages to be tasteless while overselling the significance of the event, suggests somebody must have hit somebody some time. Hone Harawira, one of the stoush’s chief instigators, does recount a He Taua colleague “dropping” one of the students after being told to fuck off, and admiring another’s chair-throwing.
He’s interviewed alongside six others from the group, including wife Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, who had bravely stood up to the engineers’ mock haka on previous occasions. While most of the He Taua participants talk jovially in a cosy wharenui gathering, four former engineering students are in a bland office and their discomfort as they choose their words carefully is palpable. You have to admire them for fronting, knowing they won’t get much sympathy from the likely viewership. They didn’t in 1979 either. One, Brent Meekan, sums up their position succinctly: “I can see that we were wrong … but it was quite galling to hear that you were wrong and you got what you deserved. It was the ‘got what you deserved’ bit that got me.”
Rating out of five: ★★★
The Haka Party Incident, directed by Katie Wolfe, is in cinemas now.
