November 09, 2016
Bad haka a curse of US life
Living in the United States means putting up with bad haka … and that doesn’t just mean the election.
That’s the experience of former San Francisco 49ers gridiron player Riki Ellison of Ngai Tahu and Te Atiawa, who now lives near Virginia.
He says he’s seeing a lot more haka performed in the states, mostly bad copies of the All Blacks.
"And when you start having non-New Zealanders, non-Maori try to do that and it’s not what it should be, from my perspective, coming out in that full passion that’s inside of you and it comes out, it bastardises it and commercialises it and takes away the honour of it," Mr Ellison says.
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