Connection Through Culture with WanaHaka®

“Education is empowerment,” says Joe Waide, owner and operator of WanaHaka® Wine Tours & Māori Culture experiences here in Wānaka.

WanaHaka® has been operating since 2016, running wine tours, Māori welcomes and custom experiences for both guests of New Zealand and Kiwis. Joe has a deep love for Lake Wānaka, a region inhabited by his ancestors in the late 1870s. His company is built on a passion for sharing the journey of the Māori footprint history of this land, combined with incredible award-winning wines.

For Joe “culture is connection.” We sat down with Joe to chat about the philosophy of his business, while teaching the values of kaitiakitanga, manaakitanga and whanaungatanga both locally and to the world over.

The Māori Welcome/Mihi Whakatau

By far, one of Joe’s most popular experiences is his Māori Welcome, designed for individuals, groups, weddings, conferences and high end visitors.

“The Māori Welcome is purely about connection; real people-to-people connection adhering to Tikanga,” Joe says. “My goal is to allow the manuhiri (visitor) to get more of an empathy towards the history and the footprint here. I want them to realize what they’re grateful for, where we are and what we have and not to take it for granted.”

Joe’s Māori Welcome starts off with the Wero (Challenge). With full tā moko, “it’s empowering and embraces all my mana,” Joe says.

“It’s aggressive, it’s in your face. It comes from a historic context of ‘you’re on my land now and I need to know if you are here as my friend or foe’’ – so to speak.

“I’m one of the most passive guys ever, but when I do that, I try to think about what it must have been like here in the 1400s, 1500s etc.. I really embody that person. People are coming onto this land and I want to protect it. That’s how it starts for my guests.”

But as Joe moves through the Welcome, he finishes the Wero and moves into the whaikorero. This is a verbal connection, acknowledging the past, present and future. Paying respects to the whenua (land), our tīpuna (ancestors), and our whānau (family).

“So I start to build this connection. There’s the foundation of understanding and connection beginning to form.”

Finally, Joe begins to teach his guests about the hongi.

“If the whaikorero is the verbal connection, the hongi is the physical connection,” he says. “One of the most important parts of our body is our upoko (head). And then within our head we have our arero (tongue) and generally, the tongue is used to ward off your opponents.

“But we also have our ihu (nose) in our head. And I ask my guests ‘what do we do with our noses?’ And they’ll usually say ‘sniff!’” he laughs. “But then I say ‘and what else do we do?’ and they say ‘we breathe!’ and I say ‘yeah we breathe life!’”

This breath is referred to as tīhei mauriora or the “breath of life”.

“So when we hongi, we’re exchanging the breath of life,” Joe explains. “When you meet someone now, you might shake their hand and say hello. But in Māori, we go a step further; we take each other’s breath of life. We’re exchanging each other’s mana. So for my guests, they start to really feel it, this connection and how it goes deeper and deeper.”

Finally, Joe ends off with both a Wānaka Haka (gifted to him) and discusses the ka mate (All Blacks) Haka acknowledging the sensitivity to Ngāi Tahu and Te Puohos raid of 1836.

“The main reason I discuss the ka mate is because many people from overseas are familiar with it, they’ve seen it before – but have never understood the history, actions, words, etc.. But I want to break down each action, word and phrase slowly and explain it. The Wānaka haka and the ka mate are 200 years apart, and we talk about the difference in the two – the intent, the values.

“This is so that next time they see a haka, wherever they are, they think about what the actions mean, what the words mean, the purpose.”

By the end of the Welcome, Joe hopes that he’s instilled a sense of kaitiaki in his guests and that they leave connected to this place.

“It’s about building a deeper connection to land and people and that means acknowledging past, loving present, but also thinking of the future.”

Wine tours

“I didn’t really want to be a glorified Uber driver,” Joe laughs when talking about the idea for the wine tasting tours. “I talk about the history of the region, I talk about the stories that brought people to this place, all while driving my guests to beautiful wineries.”

WanaHaka® Wine Tours are available for small groups and private tours with options that range from a few hours to a full day in the wine region of Central Otago.

Joe utilises the key tikanga from his Māori Welcome in the wine tours to establish the same powerful connection. He points out different locations and explains their historic significance to Māori people. He tries to take guests back to a time where there were no roads, no footwear, no jackets – just epic mountains and rugged land.

“So, you can imagine these hardened people. And the wine tour is a journey. This is what it was like in the past, this is what we’re doing in the present as we move into the future. It’s a nice blend.”

Joe also credits the wineries in Wānaka for this interesting blend of culture on the tour.

“The vineyards here are amazing with how they respect and honour the land and how they cultivate their beautiful wines,” he says. “And of course, they each have their own histories of how they came to be. When you put all these stories together, it’s a powerful human connection.”

WanaHaka® values

For Joe, he wants every person to walk away from his experience feeling his values.

The first is kaitiakitanga. “We’re protectors and guardians of this land,” Joe says. “And now my guests are as well, because I’ve inducted them, we’ve done the Mihi whakatau, we’ve connected. Their footprint from now on will affect the future generation.”

His second value is manaakitanga. “I want my guests to feel welcome and connected through my hospitality, and to extend that to others.”

And then finally whanaungatanga. “Kinship, we’re a family. We respect each other, no matter where we come from, no matter what we look like.”

Through these values, Joe hopes that he can continue to cultivate connections both virtually and in-person and make each one of his guests protectors of this place while they are here.