Whakapapa | History
The Mika Haka Foundation is the product of an extraordinary visionary and performer for an extraordinary future for young New Zealanders – particularly those from diverse and minority communities. Mika is that visionary.
The foundation was formed in 2008 to consolidate and expand the work that Mika established through the pioneering programmes of the Torotoro Trust between 2001 and 2008.
The Torotoro Trust began as an urban Māori youth ‘empowerment’ performance project, and ended up creating career opportunities and training pathways for hundreds of young Māori and Pacific youth, reaching into the arts, education and health professions.
The Mika Haka Foundation has several projects here that were seeded by the Torotoro Trust. These projects are being developed and expanded, to benefit greater numbers of young New Zealanders.
Kaupapa | Ethos
The Mika Haka Foundation invites people of diverse ethnicities, cultures, sexual orientation and religions, living in Aotearoa | New Zealand, to find pathways towards better health and education opportunities through the performing arts.
We aim to provide young people with direction and create an understanding of self discipline and boundaries. Māori refer to this as Tikanga.
This direction helps to empower young people to set goals and take responsibility for their own lives. We promote healthy living and always aim to lead by example.
We want to provide an environment of inspiration, encouraging dreams and the idea that nothing is impossible. To push yourself to new heights, to have no fear of failure and to be in a constant state of learning.
TOROTORO (by Mark James Hamilton)
Mika and Mark James Hamilton formed Torotoro in 2000 expressly to create and perform Mika HAKA. This show used haka (intimidatory postural dance) as a base from which to target the popular market in the UK.
Creation of the show began with the recording of a CD in te reo (Mika 2001). The arrangement of these songs was modelled on electronic music then popular in British nightclubs. Mika HAKA premiered in Auckland in February 8th 2000, and its last full performance was the final night of its Edinburgh run in 2003. The eight Māori and Pasifika dancers who performed Mika HAKA in Edinburgh in 2003 were aged between fifteen and twenty-one. They were all graduates of Mika’s own summer school course in contemporary Māori performance (AUT). Their dance in Mika HAKA was a fusion of tū taua (Māori martial practices), kapa haka (Māori group performance), Pacific Island traditional dance and break dance (which is central to New Zealand’s hip-hop culture). Mika HAKA was a staging of a sequence of songs, theatrically aligned both to the concerts of pop celebrities, such as Madonna or Kylie Minogue, and to the cultural performances marketed to tourists in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
Mika HAKA was an odd concoction. An urban Polynesian dance show made for Britain by a cross-dresser. Even so, the production found favour with New Zealand governmental and official Māori bodies. The show synthesised the nation’s indigenous and settler cultures differently to expressions of biculturalism ordinarily sanctioned by them.
Our mission
The Mika Haka Foundation exists to ignite young minds and transform bodies towards better lives through the performing arts and physical culture
Principles
Our work is guided by five Māori principles:
1. Whanaungatanga
We are collaborative in nature and believe that we are stronger together.
2. Manatangata
We take pride in ourselves, our work and our community. We believe that education, employment, combined with cultural, artistic and physical wellbeing will bring personal success.
3. Wehi
We want to ignite the minds of young people, encouraging them in their passions.
4. Tapu Takitahi
We believe in the sacred nature of the self. Being a leader to yourself first will allow you to lead others.
5. Manākitanga
We work together, care for one another, and respect each other.
Objectives
Our organisation is directed by the following objectives:
1. Social Change
We support all native cultures using diverse creative media to communicate visions of social change, beneficial to their own and the wider community.
2. Culture
We support, record and promote the dissemination of new thought, through the arts, addressing the question – What is the native culture of Aotearoa | New Zealand?
3. Arts
We aim to support, record and promote performing art forms that link with our mission and principles.
4. Takataapui
We support, record and promote the takataapui cultural history of Aotearoa, and the dissemination of this information and knowledge to the wider community.
5. Education & Youth
We support and promote youth events, activities, projects and discussion promoting native cultures working in unity for the benefit of all.
6. Health and Safe Communities
We support and promote a commitment to healthy living and positive life choices amongst native cultures and the wider community.
Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand who together with the British Crown formed a unique partnership called the Treaty of Waitangi.
The Treaty of Waitangi provides us with the foundation of Bi-Culturalism. The Mika Haka Foundation prides itself in being a bi-cultural organisation with a multi-cultural outlook.
It is our belief that the whole world benefits by interacting with Māori. Despite internal differences, Aotearoa | New Zealand has not succumbed to terrorism.
Native Culture
Native culture refers to ‘us’ – the peoples of Aotearoa | New Zealand – all working together, through projects that create unity and integration. Our native culture projects fulfill the Mika Haka Foundation whakatauki (proverb):
Kotahitanga mā te rereketanga | Unity through difference
United Nations Standards
As well as recognising the values of our own native culture, The Mika Haka Foundation operates in accordance with the Human Rights Charter as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.
Our vision of ‘one world, many people’ means that our projects are open to all, regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, social class, or religious and political beliefs.
