Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/08/students-honor-teacher-at-his.html
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Sounds like he was a hell of a teacher. Awesome memorial.
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DAMN, daniel. that was amazing.
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Incredible illustration of how many lives can be touched by a great teacher.
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I am conflicted…
Optimist: That was an amazing and moving demonstration and tribute on the part of all the lives this teacher had touched.
Pessimist: patiently waits to hear the news story about how the teacher was a closet racist, pedophile, misogynist, etc etc.
That is where the news cycle has left me.
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The measure of life is not what one has achieved but how well loved one was by others.
This video has left me weepy and choked up. 
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this is from a year or so ago - no such news
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What’s wonderful is that over the past generation traditional Māori culture has been permeating our NZ pakeha culture - now you’ll see a family interrupt a university or HS graduation ceremony with a haka or waiata honouring their own, it’s wonderful
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THANK YOU!!!
Nuff said - complete sentence machine.
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Ultimately, it will be the haka that will compel me to finally relocate to New Zealand.
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This was unexpectedly moving. My eyes are leaking. May his memory forever remain in the hearts and minds of his family, students, friends, and associates.
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That’s what struck me too. Maori and white kids all paying tribute in that old way. That gives me a lot of hope.
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About 12 of us performed a haka on Santa Monica Beach last May for a dear friend of ours - coder, musician, engineer and fearsomely passionate woman who loved life and art of all kinds - after a brutal cancer took her from us at 53.
It was intense - and yet it was a bare fraction of the intensity and love shown here.
This is a staggeringly beautiful tribute to a deeply inspiring leader. Thank you for posting it. May we all know and learn from people like him in our time.
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I had the pleasure of attending this school and was taught by Mr. Tamatea (and, incidentally, his widow, many years before).
Dawson Tamatea was a deft teacher who left an affirmative, indelible impression on the generation of men who past through the school during his tenure.
When I first met him as a thirteen year old, he was an imposing figure. Solid, gruff, direct and determined when it was required to control a class of boys, he would quietly provide individual instruction and guidance when it was required.
I regret not visiting before he passed. He was a gentleman I would have liked to have caught up with and thanked. Twenty years later I’d have been on that field with them.
I’m stoked this video is as popular as it has been. He earned every “sir” he got.
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as awesome as that Haka was…I went down the rabbit hole of hakes on youtube and found this one:
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I think part of the point is that it isn’t “the old way” any more, it’s a modern all inclusive society that we all are part of
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Are you British per chance?
Very moving. He must have been an excellent teacher.
Also I really loved that classic hearse.
This reminded me in the haka I saw a while ago in which soldiers of the New Zealand army honored their fallen comrades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6TRTBZUMM
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I think about that, too. What persuades me more than hakas:
- The culture appears inclusive and mild-mannered.
- It appears to be a comparatively safe location in the event of nuclear war.
- My children are less likely to be conscripted to fight in a foolish war.
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That’s a thing of beauty. It struck me once when I was at a wacipi – a pow-wow – and I looked at all my fellow natives, how wrong I had been thinking there was a line between new and old that only some people crossed. Instead, it’s a continuum. These were the next generations doing what humans have always done – survived and continued on.
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