Jacqueline Smith meets a new TV star who aims to put his own spin on the topics making headlines from a half-caste point of view.
Introducing your new Maori satirist. Or is he an activist? He's a full-blooded half-caste, ex-Grammar boy and born-again Maori in any case. And he boils blonde dolls in his new Maori Television bulletin.
Toi Iti, son of Tuhoe activist Tame Iti, is now the host of Half-Caste Broadcast, a new
satirical segment of Willie Jackson's Newsbites, a weekly current affairs show screening in on Friday nights.
Iti is a producer and researcher for Maori Television, and has worked with Jackson for a number of years, starting at Radio Waatea. But he hasn't always been so in touch with his Maori half, and in fact describes his younger self as a bit of an oxymoron.
Raised by his Australian mother in Edgecumbe, Iti didn't see a lot of his famous father while growing up, other than when his face was splashed across the front page of the local rag.
While he was always accepted by his Maori relatives, Iti was brought up speaking English and attended Auckland Grammar School as a boarder.
It wasn't until recently when he realised his 2-year-old daughter spoke better te reo than he did that he decided to rediscover his roots through Maori immersion classes.
"I thought, it's one thing being Tame Iti's son [and not speaking te reo] and another [when your] 2-year-old daughter puts you to shame."
He and his wife spent a year in intensive classes. It was hard, going back to learning how to say "pass the green stick". He felt like a child again.
But language opens the gates to the culture, and the couple have since enrolled their children, now aged 4 and 6, in full Maori immersion education.
"We are extreme born-agains, more Maori than your real Maori," Iti says.
This born-againitis as they call it, served as inspiration for his new satirical snippet, the Half-Caste Broadcast.
The risque show is co-produced by his wife Tipare and Eating Media Lunch's producer Paul Casserly. They balance each other out to ensure it straddles both Maori and Pakeha cultures, and that it pushes boundaries without getting too silly, he says.
One episode may have seen him dip a doll with a likeness to a certain blonde television presenter into boiling water, because she dismissed the outcry over strapping Manu dolls to beer taps as a bit over-the-top, but Iti insists he is not out to get angry.
"This isn't some left-wing conspiracy," he says. He insists he is just trying to put an entertaining and objective spin on issues that have been splashed about on television, printed in the papers or repeated ad nauseam on talkback.
"It's therapy really, not just for ourselves but for a lot of people of mixed blood who straddle two worlds. It gets a bit confusing at times.
"The work we are doing, we would hope, quells some of that confusion you feel when a broadcaster who gets a lot of air time says something that feels derogatory."
Inspiration can come from watching piles of footage of motor-mouthed presenters and cutting it together to prove a point, while other segments are semi-autobiographical. The born-againitis skit drew on the reaction his wife's Pakeha family had to her embracing her Maori side.
"They did truly treat it like it was something you could catch," he says. So he shot a mockumentary segment featuring a scientist who had proven that the Maori gene had attached itself to the Pakeha gene in someone who had the born-again disease.
His revolutionary discovery showed there was a way to separate the genes - finally, a way to have inter-racial relations without any sort of cultural backlash later on.
"Those are the sort of ideas we are playing with. It's lovely to go and get a nice white missus and not think about the cultural implications for the progeny. Really there are certain cultural issues that might arise later on and that was what that piece was about," Iti says and laughs, the way he hopes his audience will. "Some people might get it some people might not. If you aren't a half-caste you might find this offensive."
Half-caste is a term that's tossed about loosely these days as everyone's a bit of this, bit of that.
But for Iti, it's about being a Maori activist and a Grammar Old Boy at the same time.
"They should be mutually exclusive you would think," Iti says. He's proof they don't need to be.
The Half-Caste Broadcast and the Newsbites show should succeed in striking up the odd conversation among viewers - culture clashes are always interesting, just look at how well his dad's face sells a news story, he says.
"It gets us debating and it gets people emotive and calling up Leighton [Smith], and a lot of it is ridiculous really."
"I see the Half-Caste Broadcast as our expression of Maori activism. With more action from our Pakeha side than our Maori side."
So, like father like son, is he an activist now?
Well. Yeah.
"You take the word activist, it's quite a positive word, active. It's participating in democracy.
"I think it's healthy," he says.
LOWDOWN
Who: Toi Iti
What: Host of the Half-Caste Broadcast, part of new show Willie Jackson's Newsbites
When and where: Friday, 10pm on Maori Television
