Making a point and making it count

philanthropist, and who also owns the hotel, called it a defacement and ‘‘no different to graffiti’’, saying Iti should be prosecuted.

In some ways, that was the perfect colonialist response. It’s also a puzzling one for an ‘‘art collector’’ – a reaction both banal and incurious. To him, perhaps, it’s just a thing he owns, inside another thing he owns (the hotel), and he cannot fathom how it might evolve and live with greater context and meaning. It misses the point entirely.

Iti has long been fighting attacks on his name, literally and figuratively. Alongside infamously being branded a terrorist, he has even been wrongly accused of being an art thief.

Iti preferred to keep his own counsel this week but several people, including members of his wha¯ nau, kindly helped me understand the context around the correction. It has been a problem for a long time, they told me – so much so that after the Urewera raids court case, they created the hashtag #TameNotTama and corrected individuals, media and organisations.

Iti’s act this week happened for a number of reasons; ideological, situational, and practical. For many years Proudfoot’s Pa¯ keha projection of Iti was given mana because it hangs in a rich Pa¯ keha man’s hotel. Colonial parallels aplenty there. The family had stayed at the hotel recently and had to walk past the painting repeatedly – essentially, they were paying to walk past the mistake and accept it.

They were back in Wellington this month to present Iti’s I will not speak Ma¯ ori exhibition.

The ensuing viral social media content allowed people to participate in a ‘‘soft’’ form of activism against that racist statement and highlighted the lengths Iti and his friends in Nga¯ Tamatoa have had to go to, to make a positive change for Ma¯ ori.

They’d interviewed with media for two months, constantly correcting Iti’s name. The timing was perfect. (Incidentally, those who might ask whether this act was a publicity stunt should know that the installation had largely been packed down by then.)

Iti’s correction was on brand – he has a long record in creating performance art. Now Iti, his family and supporters, and all of us are left with a number of questions.

Has this correction added value to the painting? Who benefits from that? Why is it important to say Auckland and Wellington correctly but not Ta¯ maki Makaurau or Te Whanganui-a-Tara? What would happen if we replaced one letter with another on the prime minister’s name, and just ran with it without explanation, unapologetically?

The best result of Iti’s act might be a reconciliation which allows the painting to hang, corrected, as a reminder of a cultural shift, and the beauty of Iti’s brand of activism.

Why is it important to say Auckland and Wellington correctly but not Ta¯ maki Makaurau or Te Whanganui-a-Tara?