The national secondary schools kapa haka festival this week is much more than a festival of cultural performance and prowess.
It's probably the biggest event, across most contexts, ever in the Pettigrew-Green Arena. It has 1600 performers, needing feeding, accommodating, and transporting. About 4000 people have arrived in the area. The older ones you'll notice by the grins and the pride as they marvel about the way the festival has brought the best out in their rangatahi.
It's this which is the most stirring, an indescribable feeling known to many in Hawke's Bay who have seen their young progress through such events as the Ngati Kahungunu primary schools festival, an annual event itself dating back about 40 years.
Next February in Hastings, Kahungunu host Te Matatini, which started as a national festival of Maori performing arts in Rotorua in 1972 and was last held in Hawke's Bay in Hastings in 1983, the year the late Tama Huata founded the Kahurangi Maori Dance Theatre and the Takitimu Performing Arts School, in Hastings.
Kahungunu have not yet claimed the major prize at Te Matatini, but its role in a renaissance knows few bounds.
