63 He Taua (1979) Wearing grass skirts, drinking, tattooing lipstick caricatures of male genitals and obscenities on their bodies and grunting mock haka, engineering students at Auckland University continued holding an annual culturally offensive graduation festival ‘haka party’, despite multiple requests from Māori students and the Auckland University Student’s Association not to. In 1979, WAC decided on direct action. A group later named He Taua stormed the Engineering School. Fighting ensued and continued over the following days with students on both sides being assaulted. Eight Māori were arrested and charged. Proving the revolutionary maxim ‘never too young to lead and never too old to follow’ protest leaders defended themselves with scores of Māori students and Māori elders attending Court in support. Māori leaders such as Harry Dansey, the Race Relations Conciliator, the Auckland Māori Council, the New Zealand Māori Council and Māori Women’s Welfare League disavowed the violence but supported He Taua's stand against the cultural violence of the haka party (Walker, 2004, pp. 222-225). He Taua raised questions about the legitimacy of direct action. Should one never depart from passive protest? Can circumstance justify physical action where an absence of change perpetuates the violence of cultural racism? Whatever the rights or wrongs, there were no more haka parties. Pākehā allies protest (1980s) The 1981 Springbok Tour protests were a seminal experience for a generation of Māori activist leaders. Pākehā marched against racism in South Africa; Māori marched against racism in South Africa and Aotearoa. Forming the bulk of the Patu phalanx, which distinguished itself by crashing police lines, Māori accused well-intended but sometimes patronising liberal Pākehā of focussing on racism in other countries while ignoring racism in their own country (Poata-Smith, 1996, p. 105). These actions reminded Māori that they must lead their emancipation because liberation from white dominance will never come by way of gift or consent conferred by white people. These views Human Rights Commission received polemic expression in Donna Awatere’s Māori Sovereignty (1984) which argued that white society was inherently exploitative and dominating and Māori culture inherently egalitarian and that all Pākehā, including the progressive left and liberals, had benefited from the alienation of Māori land and culture (Awatere, 1984). Awareness among Pākehā grew. Several Pākehā individuals and groups, such as HART, CARE, ACORD and the unions and churches, supported Māori protests and the role of Māori leaders in those struggles. Dr Richard Pelly of St John's Theological College raised funds to support the WAC defendants arrested at Waitangi in 1981 on the basis that their arrest and imprisonment was politically motivated. The multi-denominational National Council of Churches was increasingly uncomfortable with blessing Waitangi Day celebrations which Māori saw as perpetuating racist injustice. In 1983, the Catholic Church called for an inquiry into the issues raised by Māori each Waitangi Day. The Presbyterian Assembly and the Methodist Conference urged their congregations to repent over Waitangi Day. Several Christians joined protesters that year; some prostrated themselves cross-like in front of the police who quickly bundled them into police wagons. The National Council of Churches proposed a moratorium on Waitangi Day observances in 1984. In 1981, people from St John's Theological College supported WAC, especially the Reverend George Armstrong and his wife Jocelyn. George and Hone Kā were very influential alongside Mānuka Henare and a few others to get the churches involved. Titewhai Harawira spoke of the particularly good contribution of Reverend Alan Brash. Years later she told Don Brash, who gave a racist anti-Māori speech at Ōrewa in 2004 (see below), that ‘Your father would be ashamed of you’ (HalkyardHarawira, 2021). The Pākehā contribution was important because, while Pākehā could easily dismiss Māori protesters as trouble making haters and wreckers, the same could not be said for obviously well-educated white middleclass Christian leaders speaking out about injustice and white racism. That same year, the Race Relations Conciliator’s Office and Human Rights Commission released the Race Against Time report which said