Tame Iti: ‘Now I know what
The most recognisable face of Mā ori activism has always seen resistance as an art form. Now in his 70s, Tame Iti is trying a new medium. He talks to Florence Kerr ahead of his big screen debut.
Aresponse from Tame Iti is never going to be mediocre, it’s not in his whakapapa to do that. For more than 50 years, New Zealanders have watched him be the most non-mediocre indigenous activist in the country.
He is Tā hoe – a central North Island iwi that boasts some of the country’s best poets, singers, writers, academics, scientists, environmentalists and New Zealand’s most recognisable face of
Mā ori resistance, Iti.
So when it came time to respond to the unlawful actions of police against the people of Tā hoe during the 2007 antiterror raids, the response was never going to be a tersely worded letter from Iti, who was the raids’ main target, it was always going to be big, meaningful and dramatic.
This week Muru, a film directed by Tearepa Kahi in response to the unlawful 2007 Government sanctioned anti-terror raids premieres in cinemas, but please don’t mistake it for a recreation of those events.
Cliff Curtis plays a community cop in the Urewera community of Tā neatua, unaware of the machinations of the assault rifle-toting Special Tactics Group about to helicopter into the misty valley.
The big-screen action film draws inspiration from historical and recent events from the 1916 arrest of Rua
Ke¯ nana, the arrest of Tame Iti in 2007, the shooting of Steven Wallace in 2000, and Toa, a screenplay by Jason Nathan.
In a swanky office on Karangahape Rd, Iti sits perched on a retro two-seater. He is one of the main characters of the film, he also plays himself. So what is it like playing an alleged terrorist – you?
‘‘Quite challenging,’’ he reckons. ‘‘It wasn’t easy. It became like a breathing exercise for me.’’
There’s an open vulnerability as Iti describes the scene of his arrest. He is transported back to the early hours of that day in 2007 when police, using a loudhailer, woke Iti, his partner and the whole neighbourhood when they demanded he come outside of his Whakatā ne unit.
He never describes how he felt during it, his memory of the arrest is looking at the horror etched on his partner’s face as police held him face down on the road.
‘‘When I got dragged out of the house, she also got dragged out, and she saw my face,’’ he says. ‘‘I had to kind of look up to see if she was all right because they had the gun on my back and my face on the road and I pushed my face up, so I could see her. So that was a moment for her in the movie that just shocked her.’’
For many who have only consumed
Tame Iti through a Eurocentric lens, this vulnerable side might feel foreign. Iti is not just the flag-shooting Mā ori activist who once pitched his old man’s tent outside Parliament in the 70s fighting for Mā ori rights, he is also an artist, poet, writer, gardener, beekeeper, father and a doting koro.
In 2020, Iti spoke at length about the issue of mainstream media and its effects on Mā ori as part of Stuff’s apology to Mā ori for its racist coverage spanning 160 years. Iti was a recipient of that racist coverage.
He called the media ‘‘a tool of the state’’ that was used to incite violence against indigenous people. So how is his relationship with the media now?
‘‘I think the media are a lot softer,’’ he says. ‘‘They no longer assume things. Particularly within the art world – they’re taking me more seriously now. Within the art circles I would always hear from people who say, ‘Oh Tame is just using art because he’s got a profile.’ No, I’ve always loved art and art is a safe place for me to be able to paint those pictures. There are no rules to art, you just create, whether it be performing arts or making a movie.’’
Iti is a native creative who has used the many stages throughout his life to create art, whether it be through activism or the tip of a paint brush. He says activism is art but how it is perceived comes down to the viewer.
‘‘The word activism is a media term with negative connotations to it. But I think you have got to twist it around, and look at activism from a different perspective. How I see it differs from how the media sees it and it can be quite trendy. Maybe not to some people, they might go watch out for that.’’
Those negative connotations have diminished as the wider public line up to hear Iti speak. He has given talks to journalists, police students and gave a wildly popular TEDx Talk in Auckland. He holds art exhibitions now and always returns home to his whenua in Rā ā toki – it’s his safe space.
Iti was a member of the Mā ori rights group Ngā Tamatoa and came to the nation’s attention in his late teens as a long haired tama from the Urewera. He is in his 70s now and, just as the nation has watched him grow from a young lad to a koro, the country has grown too – thanks in part to him and Mā ori activists from his era.
One of the major issues Ngā Tamatoa fought for was recognition of te reo Mā ori. Next month will be the 50th anniversary since the petition that finally recognised the country’s original language.
The language of his ancestors, which Iti helped save, takes prominence in his first feature film.
Iti says being able to address historical and recent trauma in the movie and do it using te reo Mā ori was meaningful for everyone involved. Iti was not the only actor in the film who was a real life participant in the raid, many of the people involved in the scenes were also detained or arrested by police during the raids.
‘‘The use of the language is very prevalent in the movie, it’s Tā hoe and [the movie is] created by us and I think it adds another layer of the way we present our story whether it’s through art, whether it be through sculpture, whether it be standing in the middle of the streets, or through social media.’’
Iti describes the movie as adding layers to the narrative. The Government narrative had been told at the time, and now Tā hoe are adding their layer to it.
‘‘I think we got to paint a different picture of it. We added different colours to it to present to the audience. All that has been presented to you in the movie is actually real, you know, those things are real. Although, this is not a recreation of the raids itself. But a lot of those things that you see in this film actually happened here in this country. I know, I’ve been a target of that.’’
He says the retelling of this story in their own words has marked a significant point in his career. Tā hoe didn’t have to wait 100 years to get their side of the story out, Iti says, unlike his ancestors who experienced cruelty and death at the hands of constabulary forces.
The history of the Crown’s interactions with Tā hoe post-1840 is horrific. The tribe
‘I’ve always loved art and art is a safe place for me to be able to paint those pictures. There are no rules to art, you just create, whether it be performing arts or making a movie.’ TAME ITI, RIGHT (PHOTO: ROBERT KITCHIN / STUFF)
experienced some of the worst atrocities at the hands of the Government, which included the Crown’s brutal scorched earth policy of 1869, which saw the homes and crops of the Tā hoe people burned as the Crown sought the fugitive Te
Kooti. Many who survived would later starve to death.
In 1916, police again raided Tā hoe lands to detain Tā hoe leader Rua
Ke¯ nana at Maungapo¯ hatu. Ke¯ nana’s son Toko and Toko’s uncle were shot dead and many Tā hoe, including women and children, were injured.
The Crown confiscated land including the tribe’s spiritual homeland Te Urewera, which was eventually returned to Tā hoe guardianship in a co-governance agreement in 2014.
The depiction of the Crown in the movie could be seen as generous, given the long history of atrocities. Iti, who was convicted on firearms charges after the raids and sentenced to twoand-a-half years’ prison, says jail didn’t affect his state of mind.
‘‘Jail is a mindset. I’ve never been in that state of mind even when I was in jail. You have to know your mind, when to pull back and then sometimes when you have to come back a bit in. I used my time there [in prison] for art and helping prisoners. During our protest years we were challenging the state but we were also seeing our own people go against us. That’s colonisation – you don’t have to go to jail to be in jail because it’s about your mindset.’’
Although the movie’s name, Muru, means forgiveness, it doesn’t mean all of Tā hoe forgive the actions on that day. But it doesn’t mean they want to stay rooted to anger: the movie is not just a narrative, it’s also a healing tool.
‘‘I think it’s time to settle the dust down, because we can’t develop and move when the dust is still out there and the space becomes very cloudy so you have to wait for it to calm down. There are several layers of that and it becomes a breathing exercise. You have to be able to breathe and when it’s too cloudy you can’t breathe in it, because you get suffocated, and you put yourself in a little wee bubble.
‘‘So we have got to clear it away so that we can start seeing each other. So we’re not just dealing with the brain, you’re dealing with every particle of yourself. From what makes us? What brought us here? What is the purpose? So those are all part of these layers. It’s important for us to go back through the ancient times because that’s where the future is.
And then we bring that, and we might have to rewrite it, reshape it and put another form into it.
‘‘So there’s always room for changes in developing in that way. So it’s very important for us even more so today in telling our story and using that as a vehicle to heal ourselves and move forward from that together – everyone together.’’
Iti says the movie is one of hope for Mā ori: ‘‘That we have a voice out there.’’ And the movie is for everyone, not just tangata whenua. He hopes Pā kehā will watch it too.
‘‘I think it’s good for them. It’s also for them as well. I think it’s important for them, too. You know, they can have their tangi with it, they can have their anger or feel whakamā about it, you know, all of that. They need a place to be able to talk about it. People often do talk to me about these things, you know, about racism within their own whā nau.’’
Iti spent time talking to whā nau who were affected by the raids and their feelings on making a movie.
‘‘It had to be a collective decision that we were going to do this. I had those conversations with everyone a year or two before the movie was made and if they felt OK about it. And they were really quite open about it and were part of the cast. We had to be all in it together because it was made in the village.They were involved from the start.’’
So where to now for the man with one of the most recognisable faces in Aotearoa?
‘‘I’m still working fulltime as an artist, I’m doing painting and sculptures and that’s ongoing for two to three years,’’ Iti says.
‘‘I’m conscious of the short span of time, I’m in my 70s and I want it to stretch out for the next decade. I’m happy about that and that’s a bonus. I’ve got another nine more years to get to that stage.’’
As the non-mediocre man prepares to depart the flash digs on Karangahape Rd, he leaves with a parting shot.
‘‘Freedom,’’ he says. ‘‘Now I know what freedom is, freedom for me now at my age is being able to do what I want to do. My whole life really was about putting my head on the block for everyone else. I think about what I am leaving behind and, for me, freedom is also about leaving a legacy for myself, my whā nau, my hā pu and my iwi.’’
Muru opens in cinemas nationwide on September 1.