Te Matatini national kapa haka festival opened yesterday with a sun-bathed Hawke's Bay welcome to celebrate it being the biggest ever, with an even bigger future to follow.
The powhiri at major sports stadium McLean Park in Napier, with the 47 groups and more than 1800 performers welcomed by tangata whenua numbering well over 400, preceded the start of the four days of competition at the Hawke's Bay Regional Sports Park, renamed Kahungunu Park, starting today.
But at a media conference after the three-hour welcome there was already talk from the leaders of the future for a 10-year strategic plan ticking boxes not only in cultural and performance aspirations but in areas of education (reo to the forefront), health, social well-being and economy, ultimately across cultures and just about as international as it can get.
There was a subtle and entirely coincidental pointer to the future from the start, just after 11am as King Tuheitia Paki and more than 1800 performers were called on to the park as it found a new role as a marae for the day, the cricket pitch dumped for two internationals within a few weeks, taking a new lease of life as the waharoa through which they would enter a paepae stretching from the marquee of tangata venue on one side of the park to that of manuhiri on the other.
It was a distance highlighted by the walk of Hori Reti Kaukau, youngest member of the board of host iwi Ngati Kahungunu, perhaps 200 metres as he strode-out to accept the koha placed down by King's speaker Rahui Papa, who had spoken of the lineage from Mahina-a-rangi, born in the Heretaunga (Hastings) area and married into the line of the Maori King in Waikato.
