Debate continues on whether meetings should open with a karakia, and if so what rules might apply. Some oppose their purported religious content (karakia can be secular). Some argue karakia must always be translated into English. Others value Te Reo Māori for its emotional power, its meanings ineffable in English, or simply because of how it sounds.
Meetings take up a large part of working life and how they are run has a big impact on outcomes. Formal meetings can begin with individuals arriving with fixed views they wish to impose on people they have never met, listened to, or learnt from. Such meetings often get off to a bad start and deliver poor outcomes because the social foundations are not in place and the right spirit does not prevail.
Most work-related meetings are transactional and focus on information-sharing, decision-making and agreed action points. Karakia are not appropriate for such meetings. Karakia are best suited to important formal meetings on weighty issues where relationships matter and enduring change is sought.
I believe that beginning a meeting with a karakia fosters respect, calm, shared purpose, and improves the chances of good outcomes. Like an All Black haka they can be both “a cultural product” and have a practical purpose (warming up). They are a low-key way of improving Māori language visibility while helping improve meeting outcomes.
However, if we support human universality, bicultural English and Māori should not crowd out all other cultures in New Zealand. My modest proposal is that important, consequentialist meetings should begin with karakia or with any song, incantation or other artistic product in any language that can fulfill the same role as a karakia. There is no inherent need for the language to be translated – the greatest human artistic achievements translate themselves through the emotions they evoke.
Some illustrative examples that transcend cultures and combine high artistic achievement and positive humanism are suggested below:
YO YO MA & ITZHAK PERLMAN PLAY DVORAK
Dvorak was a Czech composer, YoYo Ma is Chinese-American and Itzhak Perlman is Israeli-American. Look at the rapport between these two great musicians.
Oh it is not yet evening. Russian folk song
Look at the cue exchange and prompting between the singers, and the bond between the accordionist and the lead singer. And look at the delight shared when they have finished a song sung with emotional power!
Offering Chant sung by Lama Gyurme with Jean-Philippe Rykiel on piano
A Tibetan singer with a French pianist. Let’s hope that such a Tibetan taonga is not threatened by cultural homogenization.
A beautiful Finnish cappella that is almost beyond translation.
A Ukrainian piece that all sheep farming peoples can identify with!
This is a Ukrainian joke song, also popular in Russia. Without knowing a word of Russian or Ukrainian you can tell the lady is in control of the line of suitors for her hand.
Lorde & Marlon Williams – Mata Kohoto (Stoned at The Nail Salon) Live @ Alexandra Palace London
Bicultural New Zealand at its artistic best!
An authentic performance of a famous Cossack dance song.
Sonnet 30, set to music in a New York street scene
Sonnet 30 from the supreme universal genius who no one has yet been able to cancel…
Peter Winsley 
Peter.
A quick song here and there before meetings – no harm done, perhaps! Though – we may choose to draw the line at the can can and old Barry Manilow numbers.
Imagine trying this at the end of every Board Meeting (from the other supreme universal genius who, hopefully, no one will ever be able to cancel):
Gives us a lesson in kindness, nobility and forgiveness – attributes that all of us should espouse at every meeting of the minds!
Granted – will take a little rehearsal and coordination, but in “Aotearoa” all things are possible!
David Lillis
You are absolutely correct to show that no one culture should be dominant in any way. Not sure any of those alternate cultural wailing’s are any improvement.
Karakias, Hakas, long winded wailing and shouting, I turn the media off. The pagan aspects offend me. I dont accept it in my home neither should I have to tolerate it in a public affair, especially when it only reflects 8 to 15% of the population.
I dont pay my rates and taxes to support other peoples cultural whims. Nor am I a willing payer to subsidize the long drawn out re-incantation of supposed histories mostly irrelevant to the work in hand.
If a meeting has to be called to conduct some business, let it be called let it be promptly conducted, recorded and finished. This hand wringing wailing nonsense is only a preamble to claims of equal outcome that dont exist, particularly when the claimants are contributing least of the input. Time to restore plain and simple.
Time to restore civilized culture and keep voodoo myth making singsong out of our administrative affairs.
Totally agree. We had meetings without these songs and prayers for a hundred years without harm. And it’s the thin end of the wedge. Often we get 10 minutes or more which most present do not understand. On the marae the Maori way should prevail. In the hall or board room, nothing.