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New Zealand's last war was a pivotal point for race relations in Aotearoa. A new documentary about it has landed at another pivotal moment.
It is billed as "New Zealand's last war". It took place in 1979 and lasted just three minutes, but was considered a pivotal race relations moment for the country.
A landmark court case and official inquiry by the Race Relations Conciliator and the Human Rights Commission followed. Then... it was promptly forgotten.
Now, 46 years later, The Haka Party Incident is being brought back into the public conversation in a documentary, screening now in cinemas and directed by Katie Wolfe.
Wolfe says it is the story of a game-changing incident of young Māori and Pacific activists protesting a parody haka performed by University of Auckland engineering students.
"It captures an incident where the engineering department, at that time, had a yearly capping tradition where the students would dress up in grass skirts and crack a keg and then go around the university, and surrounding areas, to perform the haka, very badly," Wolfe says.
"It was very much a tradition from that department since, I think, after the Second World War. But as the years went on, there were multiple requests from Māori and Pasifika - at the university and wider - to stop this tradition."
Those requests, she says, continually fell on deaf ears, so on 1 May 1979, at about 9am, emerging activists from the group He Taua went to the university to confront the students, demanding an end to their parodying of the haka.
The response was quick and full of fists. The students were hyped, after being confronted during a haka practice in a common room.
"A three-minute fracas broke out which led to some very serious convictions for He Taua, it was severe," Wolfe says. "But a landmark court case followed, and a Human Rights Commission inquiry... it really did prove to be a pivotal moment for race relations in New Zealand," she says.
"And then it was forgotten."
Wolfe only found out about the incident when she was reading Dr Ranginui Walker's best-selling book, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, Struggle Without End, a history of Aotearoa, New Zealand, from a Māori perspective.
"It's mentioned in there, it's about a page. And it just really struck me - that's a really significant event. I thought it was really interesting and also interesting it was forgotten."
Her documentary now lays bare the largely "forgotten incident", told through the eyes of both groups involved - the activists and the students - using interviews and archival footage.
Getting the engineering students - largely "white Catholic boys" - on board was not easy, initially.
"At the time... they just did what the tradition was, they didn't question it, they didn't know how to deal with it, they didn't have any understanding of what happened, so when I started making this doco many, many years later, it was the first time they had talked about it since 1979.
"And it was really hard to get them on board... but before the film there was a play on it, and it was actually one of the engineer's wives - she'd heard about the play and she rang and spoke to me and said, 'I really want my husband to talk about this' and from there it was a leapfrog to talk to the other engineers. I'm so grateful."
Wolfe says in the current race relations climate in New Zealand, The Haka Party Incident is timely.
"I started making this project in 2017 - and we arrive here in 2025, it's incredibly timely but I really hope it contributes really positively to the discourse inside our society right now."
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