Dancing bodies and Indigenous ontology: what does the haka reveal about the Māori relationship with the Earth?

Abstract

This essay seeks to explore the extent to which the haka can be seen as an unparalleled source for approaching Māori understandings of the world and their relationship with the Earth. Taking into account the growing interest in the ontological turn and post‐humanist phenomenologies, the main focus of this paper is to examine how the haka could be a way of demonstrating Māori ontology. One of the merits of the ontological turn has been to destabilise colonial forms of thinking. After discussing the need for decolonising research related to Indigenous issues, the haka is regarded as a discourse of the earthly human experience in which the meaning of places for Māori plays an important part in the construction of the message. Later, the narrative of the body is re‐contextualised in terms of its spatiality. Three interlocked spatial scales of analysis reveal different aspects of the ontological significance of the haka. Beyond its first aim of intimidating enemies, the haka is addressed as a performative experience of the relationship between Māori and the natural environment. Non‐human and inanimate things in the surrounding environment are regarded as relatives by Māori, and as with songs and stories, the dance renews the strong bonds of kinship that exist between Māori and the natural world.

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