COMMENTARY – As Polyfest celebrates its 50th anniversary, it’s a crucial time to reflect on whether Tongan cultural performances in this iconic festival are truly being taught or merely performed. The question is urgent: Are we passing on the deep knowledge of Tongan haka (choreography) and faiva (performance art), or are we simply repeating movements without teaching our children, who are participants, to understand their meaning and learn the skills?
Tongan communities in Aotearoa have poured immense effort into Polyfest for decades, ensuring our culture remains vibrant in the diaspora. This is not just cultural preservation, it’s a national and ethnic investment. Yet, a critical gap persists—the punake (composers and choreographers) who are mainly from Kanokupolu, Tatakamotonga and Lapaha, Tonga’s historic villages of performing arts, hold the essential and traditional skills of haka, including its sacred techniques, meanings, and traditions. This means this wisdom and knowledge often fail to reach our youth at Polyfest. Too often, students learn only the surface-level motions, stripped of the why and the how behind them. We must bridge this divide, ensuring the next generation inherits not just the movements but the soul of our art.
The Need for Formal Cultural Education
This raises a deeper issue: Should Tongan faiva remain confined to oral tradition within select lineages, or should it be formally taught, perhaps even in New Zealand universities, so that knowledge is accessible beyond Kanokupolu, Lapaha and Tatakamotonga? If we truly value Tongan culture as a living, evolving tradition, then we must move beyond performance and into education.
Polyfest has given us a stage. Now, we must demand more than applause—we must seek understanding. The following 50 years should be about empowering our youth, not just to move like Tongans, but to know like Tongans. Only then will our culture thrive, not just survive.
As a journalist serving the Tongan community in New Zealand for over 20 years, I have witnessed Polyfest’s benefits and drawbacks. Many parents praise the festival for the opportunities it provides their children, celebrating cultural engagement and personal growth.
However, criticisms also arise, ranging from dissatisfaction with competition results to concerns over financial costs. Most notably, Kanokupolu, Lapaha and Tatakamotonga punake and critics have raised serious objections, arguing that some of the haka taught by amateur or self-taught punake are incorrect, culturally inappropriate, and misrepresentative of authentic Tongan traditions.
From Honouring Kings to Celebrating Community
One of the most significant shifts in Tongan culture is the changing role of faiva. Historically, faiva served as a way for commoners to honour the king and nobility, a sacred act of tribute and respect. Today, however, contemporary faiva has expanded far beyond its royal roots.
Modern performances now celebrate personal and communal milestones—birthdays, weddings, sporting victories, and community events. They also serve commercial purposes, adapting to new audiences and economic demands. While this evolution reflects the dynamic nature of living traditions, it raises important questions: Are we preserving the essence of faiva, or has its cultural significance diminished in the pursuit of entertainment and profit?
As faiva continues to transform, we must carefully consider how to honor its heritage while allowing it to thrive in a changing world.
The Dilemma of Hiva and Haka as Koloa Fufū
Traditionally, haka and hiva or faiva were regarded as koloa fufū—sacred knowledge, carefully guarded by punake and their whānau. This practice, far from mere secrecy, was rooted in the belief that such artistry carried mana, entrusted only to those chosen to preserve it.
Yet today, as our communities evolve, we must ask: Does strict exclusivity still serve our culture’s future? With growing interest in Pacific traditions and Tongan and Māori youth in Aotearoa seeking deeper connections to their heritage, should universities now develop curricula to teach these art forms formally? Or does doing so risk diluting the very mana our ancestors sought to protect?
This is not just a question of access, but of how we honour tradition while ensuring its survival. Perhaps the answer lies in a middle path—one where punake lead this education, ensuring that koloa fufū is shared with respect, not just exposed.
A Blueprint for Cultural Scholarship
Today, much of the formalized knowledge surrounding Tongan haka we see on YouTube, including its techniques and traditional nomenclature, can be traced to the University of ‘Atenisi’s pioneering work. The institution’s visionary founder, Professor Futa Helu, engaged master punakes in the 1980s while innovatively combining their ancestral knowledge with Western philosophical frameworks and scientific artistic theories. Not only did he write essays and books about that knowledge and those skills, but whenever Atenisi toured overseas countries, including New Zealand, he spoke and demonstrated some of the haka to his audiences in an attempt to give foreign attendants a clue of what those haka meant. This unique fusion not only preserved these sacred art forms but elevated them through academic rigor, creating a vital bridge between tradition and contemporary scholarship. This should show us how important for us to make our faiva more meaningful not only to us Tongans but out foreign counterparts who have a huge impact and contribution to our indigenous entertainment.
Are We Raising Performers or Future Punake?
For years, our whānau have poured passion into Polyfest, with talented students mastering the movements of haka—yet where are the next generation of punake? Despite their dedication, few emerge as true composers and cultural bearers. Why? Because they’ve been taught to perform, not to understand. Without learning the names, meanings, and deeper skills behind each haka, these students leave school with untapped potential. The result? We rely on the same few punake year after year, while gifted youth—our cultural future—miss the chance to grow into masters themselves. This isn’t just a loss for tradition; it’s a wasted investment in our people.
