Respected fibre artist, passionate advocate of Maori and Pacific artists and Te Papa event producer Suzanne Tamaki is one kick-ass wahine. Her strength was built through necessity; when the world seemed not to want her, she had to fight for a place in it.
BORN to a Pakeha mother and a Maori father, Suzanne Tamaki spent her childhood back and forth between two very different cultures. Along with her three little sisters, Tamaki grew up with her parents in Wellington - but every summer the girls bussed for 10 hours to their grandparent’s house in Kawerau, in the Bay of Plenty.
“We looked forward to that so much… But it was a bit disorientating, living in such different worlds. Our cousins gave us heaps of shit for being city kids who didn’t know how to go eeling, or speak Maori,” she says.
Her mother was “staunchly Catholic”, and Tamaki attended Saint Madeleine Sophie school, now Saint Francis de Sales, down the road from their house, behind Erskine College, in Island Bay.
“We’d just disappear into the forest in the morning and come back out at night… I used to dare [my sisters] to do all sorts of stuff, I’m lucky none of them died. Once I sent my sister on her bike down to the bottom of the steepest street in Island Bay, and she had no brakes so she shot straight through the intersection at the bottom. Thank God there were no cars.”
Adventures at home helped the Tamaki girls keep up with their cuzzies up North.
“Because we weren’t pampered and cloistered, when they took off down the river we were right there with them. The house backed onto the Tarawera river so there was lots of swimming… Once we built a raft out of raupo and took it down some rapids,” she says.  
Tamaki was a creative child, who loved drawing and could crochet, knit and sew at age 10.
“Mum was great [encouragement]. She sewed all our clothes and did the furnishings in the house. She’d go to work and then do night classes in things like pottery and lead lighting,” she says.  
Mum was also part of the reason why, around this time, Tamaki decided she was going to be a Nun.
“She used to say, ‘If you don’t eat your dinner I’m sending you to India. Then you’ll have no food’, and I felt a lot of compassion for those Indian kids… I wanted to help them get some food.”
Plans of nunhood were shattered a couple of years later, when Tamaki discovered boys.
“Suddenly they started noticing and chasing me, which was annoying, but interesting. I thought, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to be a nun. I won’t be able to get married - and I want that dress!’”
As a teenager, Tamaki was sent to school in Masterton.  
“It was 90% Maori, and I got teased and beaten up for having blue eyes. Then I moved to an Upper Hutt school that was 90% white and got called ‘golliwog’ and ‘nigger’. I went between two extremes and neither side would accept me… Situations like that made me very staunch. At first it hurt, I used to cry a lot… but you’ve gotta get a thick skin,” she says.
Auckland at 19 was finally a place where she fitted in.
“I started hanging out with a real cool Maori and Pacific performing arts community.”
Tamaki started all-woman Polynesian art collective Pacific Sisters.
“I was surrounded by strong, creative, forward-thinking women who were there to promote all Maori and Pacific models, designers, artists… We did a lot of workshopping, stuff like weaving, and went to stay on marae… just getting immersed more in the culture,” she says.
Nowadays, Tamaki is comfortable in both worlds, although as an artist she enjoys exploring the disconnect between the two. Her work is currently at City Gallery, as part of the Maiden Aotearoa exhibition, and involves an unusual use of the flag.
“I have a real fascination with flags… it surprises me how much power is in a piece of fabric,” she says.
Much of Tamaki’s work is political or confronting – but then you’d expect that of a woman with Ngai Tuhoe affiliation. Tame Iti is Tamaki’s uncle – and part of her fascination with the flag comes from the image of her uncle shooting one.
“It was basically performance art, and it got people talking. That’s the good thing about art – it’s put in a forum where you can discuss it openly. Art should make you react in some way,” she says.
Perhaps Tamaki’s most controversial work to date is a photograph of ‘Aunty kk’, based on classic painting Te Aho o te Rangi Wharepu – Ngati Mahuta, called ‘Aotearoa: Land of the wrong white crowd’.
“The fact that she’s smoking caused a stir, but the idea was showing what colonisation had done to Maori… we didn’t used to smoke; cigarettes were part of the trades. People didn’t like the name either, but it was something I grew up hearing, and we need to think about why they called it that,” she says.
At Te Papa, Tamaki implements the Matariki festival events. Tamaki says that while Waitangi Day is a day for commemoration, Matariki is more of a cause for celebration.
“It’s such a great thing for New Zealanders to celebrate. [Its roots are based at a time] when the shortest day had passed, so we were heading to longer days, but still stuck inside. A time to sit inside weaving, singing, storytelling, and getting ready for summer.
“Matariki is about acknowledging the past, but moving forward at the same time, and anyone who lives under the sky and can see those stars can live by that philosophy.”
Matariki festival, Te Papa, June 9-26.
Melody Thomas