New Zealand’s Youngest Māori MP Gave A Powerful Speech Over Being Suspended For Leading A Haka
"Are our voices too loud for this house? Is that the reason why we are being silenced?"
New Zealand's youngest Māori lawmaker, 22-year-old Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, gave a powerful speech before she was suspended for leading a haka in parliament in November 2024 to protest a bill that would roll back Indigenous rights.
During the first reading for bill, Maipi-Clarke had torn up a copy of the bill before breaking into a haka and disrupting the session.
She was joined by the co-leaders of Te Pati Māori, the Māori Party, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
The Treaty Principles Bill had proposed reinterpreting the Treaty of Waitangi, the country's foundational document, signed in 1840 between the British Crown and more than 500 Māori leaders, promising Indigenous Māori people rights over their land and culture in return for British governance.
The bill, which ultimately failed in April, was met with widespread criticism across the country, and tens of thousands of New Zealanders started from the country's northwestern most point and southernmost towns and marched for nine days in protest, culminating with a massive rally outside of parliament.
However, on June 5, the parliament voted to suspend the three lawmakers based on the proposal of a parliamentary committee that found that the haka could have "intimidated" other lawmakers.
Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer were suspended for 21 days and Maipi-Clarke for seven days because she had written a letter of contrition — or apology — to the parliament.
The suspensions are the longest in the country's history, with the record being only three days.
Speaking ahead of the vote, Maipi-Clarke questioned why they were facing suspension for standing up for the country's foundational document.
"I came into this house to give voice to the voiceless. Is that the issue here?" she asked. "Is that the real intimidation here? Are our voices too loud for this house? Is that the reason why we are being silenced?"
She pointed out that issue was not the haka or their response to the bill, but the fact that the bill had even allowed to be presented in the first place.
She said that as representatives of the Māori people, they had no choice but to be the opposer and the proposer in the parliament, "a House we had no voice in building," and actually address the core problem that the systems represent so that another generation doesn't have to enter parliament and be silenced.
"The pathway forward has never been so clear," she said as she concluded by presenting a bill that would recognize the Treaty of Waitangi in the country's Constitution Act and for lawmakers to be required to honor it by law.
"I tore a bill that divided our country. I am now presenting a bill that honors our relationship as a country," she said.
Speaking after the suspensions, Ngarewa-Packer said that they knew they were "in for a heavy day" but that they had stood their ground.
“We must continue to hold onto the taonga (treasured possessions) of our ancestors, whether it be haka, whether it be moko (tattoos), whether it be our reo (language) and not to allow old kind of colonialist views that we are anything or anybody less than anybody else and so what we heard today was really sad, really sad day,” Waititi said.
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