"Inanahi, Ināianei me Āpōpō" by Maree Sheehan (Ngāti Maniapoto-Waikato, Ngāti Tuwharetoa) Te Ara Poutama, Faculty of Māori and Indigenous development, Auckland University of Technology, Keynote Speaker, Ka Haka.

Our iwi, hāpu and whānau have long been expressing their cultural identity through traditional mediums and forms of artistic cultural practices, embodying our language and  knowledges; passing this down from one generation to another. It has also been utilised as a traditional form to express emotion such as anger, love, sadness and desire.

In more modern times it continues to be an important contribution to the advancement of our language and a chalice that holds and protects our stories, our knowledges and the expression of wairua mauri and our emotions. For aeons cultures have sung, chanted, danced, stomped, jumped and rhythmically moved together to create unity and unleash individual and collective energy and expression of cultural identity. Be it for celebration, grief, remembrance, healing or preparation for war, these cultural activities and rituals bind a community together in a purposeful, active
manner.

Ka Haka - To dance/perform
Kaha Kā - Fiery strength in performance

And because Ka Haka maintains the linkages between scholarship and practice of indigenous performing arts, we are honoured this year to have our manuhiri from the Pascua Yaqui and tribes Eddie Madril, dancer, singer, teacher of Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora Mexico and Sara Moncada, dancer, educator and cultural arts advocate to perform for us today.

We are also joined by Rosanna Raymond (Samoa), a true innovator of the Pacific art scene, founding member of Pacific Sistars. Recently awarded the Senior Pacific Artist Award at the Creative New Zealand Arts Pasifika Awards. Rosanna has held distinguishing artist residencies including De Young in San Francisco, the University of Hawai’I at Mānoa. Her work and ‘Activations’ have been received around the world at the Metropolitan Arts Museum New York, Museum für Völkerkunde in Germany and in recently the Pacific Sistars exhibition at Te Papa.

This year, Ka Haka II has united with the International Indigenous Research Conference to examine, investigate, korero, express and perform the theme of ‘Old ways of knowing, new ways of doing’ and what might it means to call a performance 'authentic' in the Māori and Indigenous context? How might mis/representations of the 'authentic' in Māori and Indigenous culture in performance be seen to reflect, or not, the influence of colonisation, mediatisation and/or globalisation?

In this, we ask participants to stake a position in a conversation about the relationship between performance and authenticity in thedevelopment of Māori and Indigenous identities and communities.