Twenty Northlanders featured among a team of 50 Maori taking in the World Indigenous Games which wrapped up on Sunday in the Brazilian city of Palmas.
Billed as the "indigenous Olympics", the event saw nearly 2000 athletes taking part from dozens of Brazilian ethnic groups and far-flung countries such as Ethiopia, Mongolia and the Philippines.
The Maori contingent demonstrated traditional games such as ki-o-rahi (a full-contact ball game played on a circular field) in the hope it will be included in future Games, as well as competing in events such as archery and running.
Local media reported on an upset in the tug-of-war final in which "New Zealand's fierce Maori warriors lost a battle of the titans against the fridge-sized Bakairi people of central Brazil"; and apparently Cartryte Hemana-Wickliffe of Putaruru was a crowd favourite in the spear-throwing.
Northlanders taking part in the Games included nine members of the Kaitaia-based Muriwhenua kapa haka group, high school students from Taipa Area School and Te Rangi Aniwaniwa, Anna Tripp and Wiremu Sarich of Taipa, Maori sports expert Harko Brown and his family from Puketona, and Sheridan Ashby of Whangarei.
