Tongans in New Zealand are divided on proposals to copyright basic hakas of the Tongan dances.
Two prominent punakes or choreographers undertook to register some of the hakas as their own.
Choreographer Māloni Tutu’ila and his group were expected to submit an application as the final stage of an attempt to control the hakas, the Tongan name for gestures, hands and body movements while performing faiva.
Further inquiries to find out about other punakes and the community’s view on Maloni’s action revealed that another famous punake Sione Anitelū Tuli was working on his own haka creations to be trademarked.
While well-known punake Rev Melesuipi Lātū was concerned at the move, she believed any trademark should go through a collective process which involved all punakes.
Some community members reacted negatively saying the hakas were handed down from generation to generation through their forefathers.
Tonga’s formal faiva or performance was lakalaka, the standing dance performed by both men and women while the solo dance known as tau’olunga was said to have come from Samoa. There were also the mā’ulu’ulu, ‘otuhaka, me’elaufola, eke, sōkē, me’etu’upaki, kailao and tau faka-Niua.
Tongan Me’etu’upaki was a Polynesian faiva meaning the hakas and singing were a collective contribution of the Polynesian islands in ancient times.
There was also an attempt by Tongans in New Zealand to change the cultural protocol of practicing and teaching the faivas, these inquiries can reveal.
There was a direct link between this proposed change and the long-standing debates over the financial obligations and pressures associated with the faivas when it comes to national events here in New Zealand such as Polyfest festival.
And specific upgrades and modifications made to the mā’ulu’ulu hakas revealed what had been described as dirty intensions of the punakes.
Originality
Māloni claimed his late father Peni Tutu’ila was one of those choreographers who had made a large contribution to the creations of most original basic hakas of the faivas.
Peni was regarded as a great punake and in a very rare move he was appointed by Tonga’s greatest punake of all times, the late Queen Sālote Tupou III to rehearse and teach the Queen Sālote College’s faivas. It was a reward after the Queen gave one of her compositions to some of the top choreographers to set it to music. Peni was the only punake who met the wish of the Queen for the kind of music she liked for her composition, Māloni said.
Māloni, from ‘Uiha island in Ha’apai, claimed lakalaka originally came from the island of Kotu in Ha’apai. He said it began as an action song for the school children to help them learn their times table. The children sang their times table while clapping and hitting their hands before they stepped sideways or laka thereby the name lakalaka was coined.
It was performed during a school day event in Kotu island in which it was attended by the Tatakamotonga chief, the then Prince Tungī Mailefihi Tuku’aho.
The Prince loved the performance and upon returning to Tongatapu he advised his choreographers to expand on it and create the lakalaka, Māloni claimed.
It was the people of Mo’unga’one island in Ha’apai which produced the first lakalaka in which the performers sang and moved their body rhythmically to the lyrics of the music, Māloni said.
The first to perform a lakalaka with the same styles and patterns seen in today’s lakalaka were the people of ‘Uiha in Ha’apai and it was taught by Māloni’s father, Peni Tutu’ila who was also known as Peni ‘Uiha.
They arrived with their new performance in the main island Tongatapu in 1935 and presented it in memory of Princess ʻElisiva Fusipala Taukiʻonetuku after she died in 1933.
The trademark
Māloni said he decided to trademark the hakas because he has all the necessary supporting evidences.
“I am well prepared for any dispute”, he said.
“I want to protect the hakas used in our Tongan faiva and anybody who wanted to use them must get the permission from me.
“We are currently working on it with my lawyer and we are in the final stage of submitting the copyright application.
“It will include still images and recorded video clips of the trademarked hakas”.
The hakas
Māloni said each faiva has basic hakas with their own meanings.
“The original basic hakas are no longer performed as they were from the beginning”, he said.
“And most of them were applied wrongly according to the lyrics of the songs ”.
Māloni said Tongan hakas are metaphorical.
“Say for example whenever a Tongan song has the word la’ā or sun, it symbolises the king. The choreographer who composed the sequence of steps and movements for that particular song must use one of the basic hakas which were created to represent the king and his children with either a ha’otā, vete or kako”, he said.
“There were five ha’otā for the royals”.
Other hakas included vete, kako, teki, tongi’one, musu, pasitā and fakamofisi.
Māloni believed the head tilt or teki was performed far too much these days.
“It has been overused by some performers to a state, thanks that they could not break their heads”, Māloni said.
Dirty hakas
Māloni believed some of the original basic hakas in the mā’ulu’ulu faiva breached the Tongan taboo of faka’apa’apa or respect and he modified them. Mā’ulu’ulu is the faiva performed by a group where the men and women were seated next to one another in rows.
Māloni gave two prominent basic hakas as an example,
One haka allowed the performers’ hands to be stretched sideway before interchangeably placing the palms and back of the palms of their hands lightly on the next performer’s chest. This meant the men placed the palm of their hands on the women’s breast, something that is conventionally taboo in Tongan culture. Another haka allowed the hands of the performers to be stretched out sideway and pointed and placed between the legs of the next performer just right under their abdomen.
Māloni described these two hakas as dirty jokes of the choreographers who originated them.
“I do not call them basic hakas. I called them dirty hakas”, Māloni said.
He said he made significant modifications to those hakas to suit today’s morality.
Ha’apai lakalaka
The question of who has the ownership of the hakas was often debated by the punakes in New Zealand, Māloni said.
He said this was why he thought now was the perfect time for him to trademark them.
“I don’t think they owned them. They are just using them. All original hakas came from us in Ha’apai. It’s ours”, Māloni said.
He argued that the trademark was made to protect his own new creations and preserve the basic and original hakas.
Māloni said his father contributed much to the original lakalaka and tau’olunga hakas which have been widely used in modern contemporary hakas.
“I knew a lot about this as I was the only child who was very closed with my father and he taught and revealed to me everything he knew about”.
Māloni believed the hakas would be improved for better if the trademark worked.
“It could reach a time where the new punakes have to create new hakas,” he said.
Some of our hakas were borrowed from other Polynesian islands”.
Māloni agreed that the faivas were localised and there were particular styles used by the Mu’a, Hihifo, Nuku’alofa districts and outer islands choreographers.
Sensitive issue
Choreographer Sione Anitelū Tuli said he was currently working on his own creations to be trademarked as his own, these inquiries can reveal.
“I am contemplating on some of those hakas in an attempt to recreate them and will copyright them as my own,” Tuli said.
“If somebody else will use them I won’t be disappointed. I will be happy for them to use them”.
Tuli, who holds the herald title of Malupō, one of the late well-known punakes of Lapaha said it was important for the punakes or whoever was interested in attempting to trademark the hakas to make sure they have their own creations before they could regard them as theirs.
He said attempting to copyright the basic traditional hakas was a very sensitive issue.
“Let’s take for example the ha’otā, vete and musu,” Tuli said.
“ Not only these were common basic hakas, they were traditionally used from generation to generation and it involved a number of people and contributions,” he said.
“If I wanted to trademark them someone might ask how am I going to do it.”
Tuli and his wife Hila’atu and their children have been teaching choreography and performance for Polyfest festival in New Zealand since 1995.
They owned and operated the Ocean Star floorshow group in Auckland which performed at community functions and events.
National solution
Choreographer Rev Melesuipi Lātū believed trademarking was about acknowledgement and credibility.
She said the question was who was going to be acknowledged and credited for the creation of the hakas.
“Nobody knows who is the originator of the hakas”, she said.
Rev Lātū suggested that it might be a good idea to discuss any trademark proposal with all the punakes
“Of course if that’s happen we can bring all the punakes to sit down and make an agreeable solution to trademark the traditions although we don’t know who is the originator of those hakas but let’s make it as a national solution,” Rev Lātū said.
Rev Lātū said a punake was a person who composed and practised their faiva. They were free for their own creativity as an artist.
“The primary question is whose haka are they going to trademark”, Rev Lātū asked.
“Someone might come up and say no that’s mine”.
The idea of trademarking of our hakas must be done diligently, she said.
“The respect and credibility we need to give to the artist and acknowledged that person’s creativity means anybody who does that will not let it go”.
Rev Lātū, whose father Talau Fakatava was a well-known choreographer and her grandfather Melikiola Fakatava was a choreographer for the late King Tupou II said the hakas were something clear and definite.
“It was a tangible thing, but it started from an intangible intellectual comprehension of the punake that started in the mind and come out through the hands and the feet and head”.
She said the trademark proposal was a matter for all the punakes to know about it and give them the respect.
“For me and from an academic point of view it is not easy”, Rev Lātū, who was also a teacher at Tamaki college in Auckland, New Zealand said.
“The best trademark of the faiva is done through the display”.
Protect from foreign thefts
Taniela Kaivelata who practised and taught lakalaka during Polyfest festival, said he believed the trademark of the basic hakas should be given to protect them from foreigners.
He said he did not believe anybody today could personally prove they owned the basic original hakas.
Kaivelata, whose grandfather late Vaisima Hopoate was sent by the late Queen Sālote to introduce lakalaka at the Queen’s town of Kanokupolu said punakes should be free to trademark their own creations.
“But I did not see any new hakas being introduced these days,” Kaivelata said.
“Some said these were new hakas but as I looked at them they did not make sense”.
Kaivelata said all hakas had meanings and names such as ha’otā lungavala, ha’otā vete and ha’otā fakamoka.
Kaivelata agreed with Māloni that using head tilt was overplayed these days and it could injure the head of the performers if they did not take care.
Replacement of punakes
A proposal was raised during a meeting by the Tongan community group which organised the Polyfest festival to replace experienced choreographers with selected school leavers who had practised the skills during the festival, these inquiries can also reveal.
It was proposed that this could reduce the costs for the faivas especially the donations to pay for the punakes.
Tuli said the proposal was strongly rejected and he did not think it would ever materialise anytime soon.
However, Māloni believed it could only take about five years from now before the replacement proposal could come about.
He suspected the parents were part of the proposal as concerns about the costs had been raised.
Māloni warned that if the experienced punakes were removed the good standard of the hakas could no longer be maintained.
Academic research
A Tongan anthropologist said intellectual property has become a major concern for indigenous peoples.
Dr Malia Talakai, whose thesis for her Doctor of Philosophy was based on “Cultural and Intellectual Property Protection of Tongan Traditional Cultural Expressions” has warned it was time for the Tongan people to protect their traditional cultural expressions and knowledges.
“Pacific peoples, including Tongans, are concerned that their traditional knowledge and cultural expressions are increasingly being misappropriated and commercialized by others, with no benefits being shared”, she wrote in her 260-page dissertation.
Prince Tuku’aho’s Lakalaka
Dr Andriene Kaeppler described the lakalaka in her doctoral thesis in 1967 as “the present day formal dance type and is performed by all the men and women of a village”.
She argued that the lakalaka was an evolved form of the ancient dance type me’elaufola.
“In the Tongan view the lakalaka is a recently created dance genre, and it is credited to Tuku’aho, chief of Tatakamotonga and a punake, ‘composer and instructor of dances and their poetry, known as Malukava,” she wrote.
“The official view of the government in regard to lakalaka is that it originated after the first missionaries started schools in Tonga
“The teachers would rise and repeat some of their nursery rhymes and at the same time demonstrate with their hands the various actions depicted by the rhymes. The children would follow suit and gradually this action song evolved.
It is said that Tuku’aho, when heard of the children’s recitations, decided that a dance built on the same principles would be appropriate”.
