Mau rākau
mau rākauMaori fighting with traditional weapons: the long taiaha, the short jade mere. Revived in the nineteen-eighties after a century's decline.
Quick Facts
New ZealandCharacter & Origin
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Mau rākau
Mau rākau, literally to carry a weapon, is a Maori martial art built on the traditional weapons of New Zealand. Boys were prepared for it from childhood: they were woken in the middle of the night and struck lightly with a stick to keep them alert, and their early training consisted of games of running, jumping, diving, stone throwing, climbing, fistfighting, and wrestling. Young men then entered a school called para whakawai, where they learned battle formations, the footwork known as rakanga waewae, and tactics through practice battles fought with reeds. The weapons fall into two groups. The long, two-handed ones measure one to two metres and are made of hard wood: the taiaha is richly carved, decorated with feathers, and belonged only to warriors of high standing; the tewhatewha is shaped like an axe, with hanging feathers used both to distract and to signal; the pouwhenua resembles a spear. The short, one-handed weapons, collectively called patu, include the mere carved from pounamu jade and the kotiate and wahaika variants; a shield woven from reeds was carried alongside them. Making a single piece took months, and for jade even over a year. From the early 19th century the weapons became useless against muskets, and the para whakawai schools died out. Revival came only in the nineteen-eighties: Mita Mohi then founded a para whakawai on Mokoia Island in Lake Rotorua, and Pita Sharples opened the school Te Whare Tū Taua o Aotearoa at the Hoani Waititi marae in Auckland. Today mau rākau also appears in the wero ceremony and in kapa haka.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.