Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke and the haka that’s been seen 700 million times by a worldwide audience

Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke has spoken of the haka performed in Parliament last week that has been seen 700 million times by a global audience.

The Hauraki-Waikato MP told the Morning Shift podcast that she was shocked to be handed David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill, that had just been read on its first reading in the House on Thursday - days before it had been initially planned to be read.

But Parliament’s youngest MP seized the moment and the opportunity.

“I wasn’t even supposed to do that,” Maipi-Clarke said of the haka on the podcast.

Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke in Parliament during debate on the Treaty Principles Bill. Photo / RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

She said Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi was originally supposed to rip the bill and start the haka, but instead, the bill was handed to her.

“But I knew I was going to get landed with something on that day and we’ve been prepping for about a year or so.

She said as they exited Parliament, she, Waititi and co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer stared at each other in disbelief.

“Wait what? What did we just do?” she said she was asking herself.

Maipi-Clarke said she decided to rip the bill as it “means nothing” to her.

“Let’s not give it the power, and we had tried many different points of order, we had tried to play the game, we tried the speeches, we tried taking it out to select committees.”

She was pleased the video went viral, as that was always the intention, and resonated with indigenous peoples all over the world.

“Let’s try and make the world see what’s going on here.”

The video was quickly picked up by international media.

Spinoff editor at large Toby Manhire told RNZ’s Midday Report the video had been viewed about 700 million times and had gained a life of its own.

Speaker Gerry Brownlee suspended the House following the Te Pāti Māori haka in Parliament.

While Manhire’s assessment was not scientific, there’s one version that Whakaata Māori shared which has had 338m views “which is pretty remarkable”, he said.

TikTok has been gathering the biggest number of views but it was also being shared on a variety of international news websites as well as Instagram.

“It’s everywhere including German and Spanish and Italian sites. It’s quite interesting watching [Speaker] Gerry Brownlee looking like a disappointed headmaster in German and Spanish and in sorts of different captions.”

The video had introduced Māori culture to many different international audiences.

“I think one of the reasons that it’s being shared so much is that what we know and maybe not everyone in the world knows is there’s that incredible impactful visceral power of kapa haka so you see something like that, it’s new and unusual but also incredibly powerful,” Manhire told RNZ.