A Māori tribe that claims New Zealand's most famous haka as its heritage on Monday told anti-vaccine protesters to stop using the traditional performance to promote their message.
Vaccine protesters have performed the "Ka Mate", a Māori haka composed in about 1820 by Te Rauparaha, war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe, at their rallies over the past few weeks against vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions."We do not support their position and we do not want our tupuna or our iwi associated with their messages," the Ngati Toa tribe, or "iwi" in Māori, said in a statement, referring to the tribe's ancestry or "tupuna".
Although there are many forms of haka composed by different tribes for various uses and occasions, the "Ka Mate" is the most widely known because it has been performed by the All Blacks at international rugby test matches for decades. New Zealand, which has among the lowest rates of COVID-19 in the world, has struggled to fight off the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus this year, forcing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to move from a strategy of elimination through lockdowns to living with the virus with higher vaccinations.
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