Last week got me Pacific Sisters waistcoat out, me best Suzanne Tamaki feathers and blanket , gathered the family and off to see her Manu Wahine...kite lady opening celebration at the British Museum, small crew but luffly night and having Ngati Ranana there for full whanau tautoko was fantastic, (otherwise would of been a bit!!!!!) heehee, wrote Suzanne a beautiful dedication and Salvador accompanied me....... the main ingredient missing was Suzanne....we'll have to work on that

Talofa lava, Malo le soifua maua …..warm pacific greetings, may my mountains greet your mountains, may my waters greet your waters and may my house, greet your house

And may my ancestors greet your ancestors

Afio mai, afio mai, afio mai……………….

Alofa tele lava Suzanne and whanau, wish you were here, my dear, …….
Fa’amanauiaga…….. Manu wahine, a pleasure to meet you


I wish we could see you fly and dance with the gods,
Cradled in the arms of Tawhirimatea
Blessed from the ground by Tanemahuta
Recognized by Ranginui as you bring the scent of Papatuanuku closer to him, I can see him breathing it in.

I’ll be thinking of you as Matariki rises, I’ll spread my wings and dance and make music for you.

Hineraukatauri will be proud, we won’t let you grow idle with silence, we ‘ll be here to keep you warm, just holla girl, I’ll come running, dripping in seeds and Tusks, and my best feathers, you’ll recognize me by my bark cloth skin embossed with celestials and slightly bruised petals and I’ll be singiing

E noho nei au.

Suzanne this is my dedication of appreciation to you

My beloved pacific sister, we had us some good times, bad times, hard times, all night long times…this time we celebrating all your

imagination, creations, transformations

Sensational

This native sista so sexy crazy cool, a self professed mother like no other….a mana wahine

A creative native………full of self determination and Maori pride, uplifting and upholding the kaupapa in the struggle for survival,…………..Tinorangatiratanga

There’s a river inside her, it runs deep
And it moves fast

Hang on if you want to come for a ride, its wild in parts, I’ve been there

There’s orange stripped wheke down there, he lives in the noisy part, with a bright red taniwha as his neighbour, they both got paua shell eyes

It’s alright the waters are clear so you can see them coming just take shelter in the warm parts, we’ve all had to call upon them sometimes….much re-negotiating can be achieved at high tide….we were just looking between the lines

Re-using the unwanted flotsam and jetsam of the times

She’s got blue blue eyes and tattooed thighs, jet black west coast hair and a laugh so dirty it’ll make you blush from the inside

if she was here she be wearing, her favourite leathers and feathers with some killa heels and an assortment of tribal fibres and the sun shining out of her …arghghghh

hmmmmm……..all that huruhuru froufrou getting me excited

Memories heating up my blood, feeding the fire within me, flowing ……over me, under me, around me, surrounding me

Makes me filled with pride

Tino pai mahi ehoa

&archiveJeez so many adventures, so busy not even taking many photos, so aroha mai as my mind is full to the brim with many adventures, have logged up the few that I have. The NYC trip in October was amazing, Yuki was exhibiting at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC and I had been invited to render some lectures on artists and their role inside the museum at Columbia Uni and the New York University, much fun mixed with blah good feul for the puku. I met many nesians in the big apple. Bethany is there having just started her MA at NYU, meet up with old friends and met many new ones, talked,ate, drunk, skanked, cooked(eek the sweet and sour oka is a good story), performed with Yuki, dog sat for Adriana, hung out in Spanish Harlem, walked along the river watching NYC sap drop into autumn...and the sun shinned, good moon, embraced Hawaiian tohunga, meet african queens, alaskan athletes,playwrights, artists, rappers, cuban intellectual artists that can cook the meanest kai and feed your brain at the same time....the list goes on

Viewed our measina housed in various musee!!!! check this site out if you want to visit the amazing collections at American Natural History Museum, the entire(well some policitally sensitive material missed out is online.

http://anthro.amnh.org/?CFID=309774&...

Witnessed Shigeyuki Kihara make history as the first Samoan artist to exhibit at the MET, most of the artist there are dead, and most certainly not Samoan, though many tribal people in the house, many many moons of history and peoples.... well she was alive and kicking and represented so well. We had a Salon and invited all the savages to lounge and share artistic meanderings...AWESOMe times, susanah , lucy, lani, lisa, ariana, ata, ila, lorene, coco, john, tze, nadema, anna to name a few.....

Came home went to Bonne for a meeting, cross fingers will be involved in a project there, came back to London town and started prep for Ngati Ranana and Beats of Polynesia Xmas Concert, so feeling the burn of new learning waiata, haka, and drum dance...yo the Tautai dance is mean my thighs still in shock....met up with June Grant and film crew...(jeez every body seems to arrive with their own film crews these daze...yuki had her own one as well), who is a relative of Makereti Papakura who is buried over in Odington near Oxford, she was one of Aotearoa first media stars and was a guide at Whakarewarewa, she was also one of the first women (who happened to be Maori) to go to Oxford Uni...amazing women and inspirational women was great trip out of London ..nice to see some green feilds and smell cow shit

http://www.achurchnearyou.com/odding... (the church where she is buried)

http://www.achurchnearyou.com/image.... (the link to the image of the remembrance to the NZ and Maori forces)

Well ding ding.... the next round, have been writing and designing costumes with my mate Amanda Barnes, we have jacked up a studio to work in at the Whare Tu Toa here in London, so watch this space as Yuki, George Nuku and I have an exhibition here in London next Sept."ETHNOGRAFIKA" ..so planning a Tusk for each day of the week...can't wait....and in-between all that and taming the madness, becoming a fellow for the World Art Forum, we farewelled some old bones home to aotearoa with Te papa, so much to talk about so little time..because thats a whole other story for you hoarys

well over and out xxx to all happy all the things be back atcha with the Xams concert images

Cor I have been so bad on me bebro, too much meke going on, after the San Francisco buzz, started to work on getting a UK based Poly posse to represent at the Musee Du Quai Branly exhibition, Arts and Divinties...

http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/programm...

Amazing exhibition shame about the French, Ku in a box and general disregard for the living dynamic...me thinks they need a few lessons on dealing with the real live Polynesians of the 21st century..hmmm anyways the symposium was fantastic thanks to the diversity of voices, our Hawaiian cuzzies were eloquent and passionate, Te Papa and the Auckland Museum were there, and representing them were amazing Polynesian scholars, mixed in with the global oceanic academic and museum peeps and of course me own self and George Nuku giving some good blah and arty articulations presentations..... but we still preaching to the converted....How many rivers do we have to cross....before these artifacts of colonialism..the museums... will start to open up their consultation with the communities they represent, the British museum has started but we Oceania don't even have our own gallery so much work to be done otherwise we are going to be swallowed up and not exist outside our place in the globe...and our Va is bigger than that

Anyways writing some new material as part of The Shakey Isles Festival so if you in London town get on it and if you on the shores of the pacific me promise to take some pictures and do some decent show and tell in the meantime enjoy one of my new poems

http://www.shakyislestheatre.com/mai...

Dreaming of Cannibals or
A Well Exercised Consumption in the Name of Science


The French dream of cannibals-the untainted kind
Those aligned with the gods, children of nature,
Innocent in their wanting,
Displaying unsuckled breasts, still firm from youth
Half clothed, yet with the posture of the high born

Decorated with flora and fauna

The English like them with a knife and a fork
Well mannered, resplendent with dignity
Well made, with all the fancy and finery
A keen mind for business
Fluent in gentlemanliness and usually escorted home

Decorated with arms and armoury

The Americans like them, with a deep harbour
Looking like movie stars, handsome and full of savage beauty,
Adorned, apocolypto stylee, running for their lives,
With a crack of the whip and some special effects
An all singing all dancing yankee doodle dandy,

Decorated in stars and stripes

Me I like my mine on the dance floor
Drums and bass with a hint old skool reggae,
Some old soul and a bit of boogie down productions
Tusks on show, fully grown, kept sharp,
By all those years of rooting around the forest floor
A warrior… walking tall
Not a soldier boy- fighting someone else’s wars

Eat me- maybe you’ll need it for survival, use my blood to taint the dawn
Ingest me- in the name of science, let my flesh melt inside you
Excrete me- the very pores of your skin with smell of me

We can consume the night

Decorated in flora and fauna, arms and armoury, stars and stripes, yes we cannibals are alive and kicking, thriving , licking our fingers and making you eat your words.