April 10, 2024
Missing and murdered indigenous women behind haka
A veteran musician and activist says she’s enjoying international touring again in the wake of Covid.
Mihirangi Fleming of Ngāti Whātua has just played the Byron Bay Blues Festival in Australia with her group Māmā Mihirangi and the Mareikura – where she met her idol Rickie Lee Jones.
The groups heads to Canada in July … and Mihirangi is looking forward to performing a special wāhine haka.
“That is about a haka that we had written about the missing and murdered indigenous women, in Canada. So the haka itself is all about wāhine reclaiming their spiritual equality in their own whakapapa,” Fleming says.
She says the wider issue is the global inequality of wāhine.