The haka as an official part of Anzac Day ceremonies – yes or no?

A Western Australian branch of the RSL is involved in a squabble over whether the haka has any place at an Anzac Day ceremony – so who’s right and who’s wrong? 

The ABC has interviewed a Maori man who asked the local RSL in Bunbury, WA, for permission to do the traditional dance at the Anzac Day commemorations that the RSL had organised in Bunbury in WA. The RSL branch’s president, John Gelmi, reportedly declined to give permission, so the Maori man, David Tekona, performed it anyway in front of the crowd gathered for the dawn ceremony.

Now, Tekona, who says he wanted to do the ceremonial performance as a mark of respect to military personnel from New Zealand and Australia, has accused the RSL of being discriminatory in denying him official right to dance.

But the WA RSL has told the ABC that Tekona’s decision to put on an impromptu performance after being asked not to, and after having been invited to perform instead outside the RSL building in Bunbury immediately post the official service, was insulting to veterans.

“Anzac Day is about all of us not just some of us, and I think they get rightly upset when someone takes advantage of that,” WA RSL CEO John McCourt told the broadcaster.

The story raises the interesting question of what is appropriate at an Anzac Day ceremony.

For example, the haka and the corroboree, a traditional indigenous Australian dance, were performed in unison immediately after the dawn service on Anzac Day in Perth in 2017 and again this year, with The West Australian newspaper reporting that the 2018 crowd was mesmerised by the dual performance. The dance was a collaboration between two men’s mental health groups, Haka for Life and Corroboree for Life, with the Haka for Life organisers even thanking the RSL for its support of the initiative. 

And Maori soldiers are said by historians to have been a formidable fighting force who battled side-by-side with Australians as part of the Maori Battalion, including at Gallipoli. About 3,600 Maoris served overseas in World War II, with a 70 per cent casualty rate. (There’s a book about their experiences called at home and at war called  New Zealand’s Maori Battalion, Nga Tama Toa: The price of citizenship.)

Veterans recalled in a 2008 article in the Sydney Morning Herald that the Maori soldiers sometimes performed a haka before going into battle.

And the Australian Government’s own Anzac Centenary site, which is in its final year in 2018, celebrates a Maori man called Karenema Pohatu, also known as Robert Stone because Pohatu translates to stone in English, who moved to Australia to work as a shearer before enlisting to fight in WWI at the age of 21. Pohatu was killed at Gallipoli on April 26, 1915.

Speaking to the ABC, 70-year-old Vietnam veteran Brian Buzzard said that he understood that some older veterans may think that including the haka in an Anzac Day ceremony was unusual, but that younger veterans would likely support it.

“We’ve got to keep the NZ in Anzac — it’s no good just having Australia — it’s about Australia and New Zealand,” Buzzard said.

Do you think the haka or the corroboree has a place at Anzac Day ceremonies? Would it bother you if it was performed as part of the official event?