Maori football

[Taha Maori]

Greetings to you all from sunny Tauranga in New Zealand! We have a game with alot of history called Ki-o-Rahi. When the missionaries came here in the early 1800s they "persuaded" my ancestors to give up much of their lifestyle culture, especially the games and pasttimes.

Ki-o-Rahi was one of these games, and even though, like alot of Maori cultural games, it is making a "comeback" of soughts thanks to the efforts of very dedicated instructors it is still a struggle to compete with introduced games that the new fangled NZ sports organisation called SPARC is promoting. SPARC use Maori to fill their sports programmes and they entice the kids to the introduced sports (like rugby) by hiring turncoat Maori "sports stars" who "bait" the kids.

We are intrigued that rugby is still touted by the mainstrem population in our country as beginning when William Webb Ellis picked up a ball and ran with it (sound familiar?)

To Maori a more accurate record would read that the first European visitors here (in the 1700s) saw our freeflowing fullon contact Ki-o-Rahi game being played and took aspects of this back to Britain and repackaged it with their mob game to create Rugby.The British were renowned for "taking" ideas and calling it their own especially in the realm of sports. They would never admit to have created a game from the pasttimes of what they perceived to be a "backward heathen race" hence the power of their printing presses still churn out misleading discourses.

Anyway just my simple views from the history we have retained, any views on this subject, the commodifying of native games or any other examples will be eagerly anticipated...regards and kia ora koutou...Taha Maori