The Haka: A Roar from the Bones of the Earth

There are some things in this world that cannot be explained—only felt.

The haka is one of them.

To witness it with your whole being is to remember something you didn’t know you had forgotten.

To perform it with your ancestors in your lungs and fire in your belly is to feel time collapse.

It is not simply a dance. It is not just a ritual. And it is certainly not a theatrical “war cry,” as the colonizers once labeled it.

The haka is an embodied portal—a thunderclap of presence, a call to dignity, defiance, and deep belonging.

A Lineage of Fire and Earth

In te ao Māori (the Māori worldview), all things are interconnected—whakapapa links not just people to people, but to land, sky, river, bird, star. The haka arises from that cosmology, not to dominate, but to honour. To remember your place. To speak truth with your full being.

Each stomp is a conversation with Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother.

Each cry is a breath borrowed from Tāwhirimātea, god of the winds.

Each gesture carries encoded story, genealogy, resistance, and love.

To stand in haka is to say:

"I am not separate from this land. I do not come alone. I carry a thousand voices behind me. Let me remind you who we are."

The Myth of the “War Dance”

The British called it a war dance because that’s what their eyes were trained to see—aggression, intimidation, primitive display.

But that’s projection. Colonial eyes often interpret resistance as violence, and deep presence as threat.

Yes, the haka can be performed before battle. But it is also performed at weddings, funerals, graduations, tribal meetings, and moments of great grief or celebration. It is not a weapon—it is a ritual of full-bodied witnessing.

When performed before war, it was never just to rally or intimidate. It was to make the invisible visible. To declare one's readiness not only to fight, but to die well. To meet fate in integrity.

But more often, the haka is a sacred gesture of welcome, of mourning, of honour.

It is not an act of war. It is an act of remembrance.

Tears, Not Just Sweat

There is a haka for the fallen. For the beloved. For the babies born into this world. For the elders crossing into spirit. It is weeping and wailing woven into thunder.

And when you see those tears on the cheeks of the men and women performing haka—don’t look away.

That is grief made sacred. That is love unhidden.

This is one of the most revolutionary things about haka: it reclaims emotional expression as strength, not weakness. It reclaims collective embodiment as medicine. It rejects the colonized, stiff-upper-lip, sanitized spiritual performance we’ve been trained into. Haka gives us back our bodies. Our voices. Our shouts. Our trembling.

A Gift for All Humanity

Why should this matter to you, if you are not Māori?

Because haka reminds us of something we all once knew.

Before the world was broken into nations and borders…

Before ceremony became spectacle…

Before men were taught to swallow their cries and women to quiet their rage…

We all came from people who danced like this. Who stomped and sang and called the rain.

We all come from earth-based lineages that knew the body is a gateway to the sacred.

We all once stood in circles, not rows. We all once wept and wailed in rhythm.

The haka is not just a Māori thing.

It is a human thing.

A reminder. A mirror. A summoning.

Your Voice, Remembered

Let this be an invitation.

To reclaim your own ritual.

To remember your own people’s songs.

To call your voice back from exile.

To stomp. To cry. To rage. To praise.

To return to your body.

To speak with your whole being again.

You don’t need to borrow the haka. That’s sacred and specific.

But you do need to remember that you, too, carry something like it inside.

What will your body speak, when you finally let it?

The haka is not performance. It is presence.

It is not a war cry. It is a soul cry.

It is not past. It is prophecy.

And it echoes still.

In every beat of a heart that refuses to be quiet.