New Zealand MPs who performed haka in parliament given unprecedented punishment
Co-leaders of Te Pāti Māori and its youngest member to be temporarily suspended from parliament after performance protesting controversial bill
The three MPs will not receive their salaries during the suspension and will not be present during next week’s annual budget debate.
There we have it. They're making sure that Maori people won't have representation when taking away their rights is debated again.
This sort of thing always strikes me as odd.
There are agreed rules on language, some parliaments have dress code but besides penalties or fines a representative can be served with under no situation a representative can be barred from exercisizing their dutifully elected functions.
I have representatives in my national assembly with criminal charges that none the less exercise as they have been elected.
This is plainly stupid and abusive.
I don't know about the NZ parliament, but in the UK parliament upon which it is based it absolutely possible for members to be thrown out of the chamber. It's not even that rare. Famously Dennis Skinner was kicked out for calling them Prime Minister David Cameron "Dodgy Dave" and refusing to retract it.
Are you quoting some rule or just your own expectation?
In New Zealand it is pretty common for members of parliament to get thrown out of the chamber for a whole bunch of reasons. In general you have to do whatever the speaker says, sort of like you would a judge in a court proceeding. There's a whole lot ( perhaps dated ) rules around treating other members of the house with respect, letting them speak when their part of the process is up etc.
I think most of this is covered by this list of rules: https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/parliamentary-rules/standing-orders-2017-by-chapter/chapter-3-general-procedures/
Save this example for the next time some chud tries to tell you colonization is a past event and not an ongoing process right this minute
This was five months ago. The MPs haka sparked national protest and a nine day march against the Treaty Principles Bill, which did not pass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_Principles_Bill
Sounds like it worked, and now the conservatives are mad and trying to punish?
Pretty much. That and trying to distract people from the details of their budget, which will without doubt be all the usual crap you'd expect from conservatives.
I would venture to guess that the disciplinary action generated more attention than the haka itself. So a good thing in the end.
I think that was amazingly awesome. The people saying there's a time and place, you're correct. This was the time and place. Take a stand, make noise, make people uncomfortable. Quiet compliance is what got us here in the first place.
Also like, it's fucking Aoteroa. In colonial nations one must be prepared for indigenous members of their government to perform cultural acts of resistance when the colonist faction of the government gets up to some shit.
From the other side of the world I saw her actions powerful and warranted. Though I do come from a country with a history of far less reasonable displays of dissatisfaction in our legislature.
Culture, in MY politics?? No, no, I need to pretend all people are the same and want the same things I do, if I have the context of culture 🤢 I might have to consider people have valid perspectives I don’t share!! /s if we do that here
Exactly. White person living on the other side of the god damn planet here, and I cheered when I heard what she did. She's amazing. If all politicians had her moral fiber and backbone, we'd have world peace.
Wait if I'm reading this right this punishment comes from something that happened 5 months ago and it will result in them not being allowed to participate in the budget debate? Will that's fucking Twisted isn't it? If it was really a punishment for an action why would it not happen sooner? Why would they wait until this critical budget debate to implement it? Seems like maybe it's just an excuse to stop these people from participating in the budget debate. Like an excuse to stop their constituents from being represented. This is blatantly anti-democratic.
It’s racism so that the colonialist power structure can continue its genocide without dissent from the people it is targeting
In Spain one congressman, Alberto Rodríguez Rodríguez, had his seat removed by a "judicial decision" in 2021 and once the elections passed, in 2024, and he didn't have the seat anymore, that "judicial decision" was reversed, saying that he had to be fined but he shouldn't have lost his seat.
Now everyone, let's sing: LAWFAREEEEEEEEEEE!
Brazil had an entire presidential coup based around the same logic.
Pretty amazing, the NZ conservatives mount a major attack on Māori and are then intimidated by haka. Snowflakes.
This call for more hakas... 💪
Hakas will continue until morale improves
My morale improved with the first one! .....there is room for further improvement though 🤔
That was pretty badass.
Agreed. If that had been targeted at me, I would have crapped my pants.
The Speaker sure looked like he wanted to.
Wider angle video showing the whole scope of it plus his reaction, which was priceless.
Ah, at more or less frequent time spans I end up searching the internet for all these amazing ritual performances (forgive my ignorance, I am from North Europe so don’t really know what it is exactly or what it should be called) of the Māori.
I get so captured and enchanted by them, it’s so powerful but often also beautiful and somehow extremely sorrowful or whatever emotion the display is intended to signal (or at least ends up signaling to me as a complete ignorant foreigner), I always end up wondering that had Christianity not crusaded our lands and bloodily murdered and genocided our cultures, might we have something equally powerful and captivating to preserve? It’s not a far fetch because we do have a lot of remnants and first party findings on the old Norwegian and Danish and Swedish cultures of around the Northern European Iron Age for example, that had similar sort of rituals or even just musical tastes and conventions. Our peoples neighbored those, though were distinct and entirely different on most fronts, though a lot of people today fancy conflating us with the “Vikings”. We were their looting ground for the most part and any influence from their culture on ours would’ve been likely equally bloodily brought. But I digress.
Had the southerners not crusaded and killed most of us off, snuffed out the light of our culture, forced everyone brutally to follow whatever flavor of Christ each crusade was bringing, maybe I shouldn’t feel so amazed by the amazing cultures far away. But maybe we didn’t have anything as powerful in the first place, who knows at this point…
But these shows of force and unity are always so captivating, I end up bingeing videos of them for hours on end, even if I don’t really know what they are about and what each of them mean.
I love this. It’s so close to my heart somehow, feels so close to home, yet it’s a faraway thing.
I totally get where you're coming from, and I agree Christianity did snuff out a lot of that, but not necessarily the way you may be thinking of it. Christianity was a face, tool, and motivation of empire, and empire seeks to standardize culture for the sake of stability. Christianity has deeply powerful cultural performances too. There are traditional catholic rituals that by their nature as a force of colonizing power and as part of globally dominant cultures (and as part of our own cultures) we see differently from this.
This haka was powerful and beautiful, and part of that is by its own merit, but part is that it is people and culture resisting colonial power.
Also, the modern era has been immensely destructive to culture and ritual except where it is intentionally preserved. While it would be easy to pin it on Christianity and the protestant reformation, the reality is that it's also caused by the formation of nations (the unification of Italy for example created a shared culture between Venice and Rome for the first time since the fall of the western empire), the advent of mass travel and communication, the rise of industrialized lifestyles, and the shift from generation after generation living in the same spot to the normalization of living somewhat far from your family, all of which combined to more or less radically weaken local cultures.
might we have something equally powerful and captivating to preserve?
...no. As in: That's not the kind of cultural practice Christianisation wiped out or we wouldn't be burning stuff come spring, dance around maypoles, and whatnot. The Faroese are still into singing sagas as an actual community practice. Missionaries back then weren't trying to regiment people into factory workers, make them sit still on chairs and such.
It's kind of a grass is greener on the other side kind of situation. There's a good reason stuff like Heilung is captivating, but that's because they're modern-day shamans speaking to instincts buried by modernity, not because they'd be historical in their music or practices. Norse folk music indeed sounded pretty much like Norse folk music does today.
Colonialism is alive and well in NZ.
It was clear the collective western governance doesn't give a shit about indigenous people when they facilitated, funded, supplied arms, and downplayed the palestinian genocide. Their "human rights" only extends to marketing themselves as moral civilized people, while making themselves rich and powerful comes first.
Fuck the King
Like the French do.
They did a dance and were suspended. Sounds like New Zealand parliament is channeling their inner magat.
So who can regale us on why the current coalition is running cover for colonialists in New Zealand. I thought that was usually a losing move there.
We got the project 2025 test run when a three party far right coalition got elected in 2023. Most regressive, cruel and mean sprited government in a generation.
USA, NZ, Australia, Canada, UK and beyond. They all coordinate, they use the same consultants, the same messages, their AstroTurf political advocacy groups all share info and coordinate policy to make our lives worse and the rich richer. Tailored slightly for local conditions but the same overall goal.
They really are a cancer all over the Western societies.
Can you elaborate? Which country is invading or colonializing NZ? This is genuinely news to me, I assumed NZ is a free country.
Does the hakka mean the same as it does in western cultures as a peaceful perfomative protest or does that mean something like a threat/declaration of war in Maori culture? I'd apply the former, but last time I did that I was accused of being orientalist :/
It can be both. Traditionally is was a 'war dance', but depending on the lyrics and context it can be used as welcoming, a farewell, or many such things. You would have to translate it to know.
makes sense
Boo
Every parliament record here in Hungary
Can they appeal to the courts?
Unconscionable.
Parliaments have rules dictating behaviour for good reason. If they don't then discussion break down into chaos. So should they be punished? Absolutely.
The severity of that punishment depends on the type of haka and what was intended by it. In all the coverage I've seen no translation of what was said. A haka can be anything from expressions of joy to a declaration of war.
If the point was to intimidate or worse, then throw the book at her. Just as someone using intimidating or violent language would be ruled against. Doing it in a way specific to a particular culture does not get you protection.
If it was just a display of Maori culture at a poignant moment, expressing grief at the decision, then more leniency can be shown. However I doubt that's the case given the physical actions involved.
Institutional violence is constant intimidation.
If I recall correctly it was in response to a bill that would nullify the treaty with the indigenous people. In my mind, trying to gut the agreement that you'll work together and respect each other instead of trying to kill each other is an act of war, any response less than killing people is being respectful.
Nah you racist. This is her culture and he land and the cunts trying to pull bullshit will get Haka'd out of parliament
Fuck your decorum
In case you’re actually curious https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ka_Mate
Thanks. That does give me more context. Not as bad as it could have been, but certainly has some venom in parts.
They did this right before Parliament was set to vote, and managed to disrupt and delay said vote.
So yes, it was pretty bad.
The video is less than two minutes long
