Robert's Rules of Haka

Other video angles and edits are available on YouTube. Among many mass-media stories, we could start with one from Qasim Nauman, "Why New Zealand’s Maori Lawmakers Protested With a Traditional Dance", NYT 11/15/2024:

New Zealand’s Parliament was temporarily suspended on Thursday as Māori lawmakers performed a haka, a traditional group dance, demonstrating their community’s anger and fear over a bill that aims to reinterpret the country’s founding treaty with its Indigenous people.

During a first reading of the proposal, when the speaker asked Māori lawmaker Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke how her party, Te Pāti Māori, would vote on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, she stood up, tore up what appeared to be her copy of the legislation, and started performing a haka.

She was joined in the haka by other opposition members on the floor, as well as people in the gallery overlooking the chamber.

The speaker, Gerry Brownlee, temporarily stopped the session. Ms. Maipi-Clarke, who performed the haka in Parliament after she was elected last year, was suspended over the protest, which Mr. Brownlee described as disrespectful.

According to Wikipedia,

Haka are a variety of ceremonial dances in Māori culture. A performance art, haka are often performed by a group, with vigorous movements and stamping of the feet with rhythmically shouted accompaniment. Haka have been traditionally performed by both men and women for a variety of social functions within Māori culture. They are performed to welcome distinguished guests, or to acknowledge great achievements, occasions, or funerals. […]

New Zealand sports teams' practice of performing a haka to challenge opponents before international matches has made the dance form more widely known around the world.

There are many videos of sporting hakas on YouTube and elsewhere, for example:

The Wikipedia article also explains the etymology:

The group of people performing a haka is referred to as a kapa haka (kapa meaning group or team, and also rank or row). The Māori word haka has cognates in other Polynesian languages, for example: Samoan saʻa (saʻasaʻa), Tokelauan haka, Rarotongan ʻaka, Hawaiian haʻa, Marquesan haka, meaning 'to be short-legged' or 'dance'; all from Proto-Polynesian saka, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian sakaŋ, meaning 'bowlegged'.

The NYT article offers this explanation for the political context of the protest:

The Treaty of Waitangi, signed by Māori chiefs and the British Crown in 1840, is considered New Zealand’s founding document. It forms the basis of the laws and policies aimed at redressing historical wrongs against the Māori by colonizers.

But a political party known as Act, the most right-wing member in the conservative coalition government, says it wants “equal rights” for all, and that special provisions for people based on their ethnic origin have been divisive for New Zealand society.

This month, Act introduced the bill, which experts say could severely damage race relations and undo decades of work aimed at redressing historical wrongs against the Māori people by colonizers. It has already stoked racial tensions in the country.