The Nelson Arts Festival programme is now live, and it has links throughout the region. The Guardian will preview some of these relevant performances in the coming weeks.
Te Wehi Ratana attracted national attention as a member of Te Waka Hourua, the polarising activist group that made a political statement by defacing Te Papa’s Treaty of Waitangi exhibition in 2023.
An “irreverent” upcoming Nelson Arts Festival performance features the aftermath of the activist’s role in the protest, which saw him abseiling from the museum ceiling to reach the “Signs of a Nation” exhibit.
Te Wehi (Ngāti Raukawa and Te Arawa) used an angle-grinder and spray-paint to make some redactions to the oversized documents, which featured both English and te reo Māori versions of Ti Tiriti o Waitangi.
He spent two nights in Rimutaka prison for his part in the protest, “which was long enough,” he recalls wryly.
These 48 hours in prison have been reimagined into a one-man show, starring Ngahiriwa Rauhina and entitled, ‘ration the Queen’s veges’ – a nod to one of the hasty changes made to the treaty’s third article.
Te Wehi sat down with scriptwriter Tainui Tukiwaho to go over the story, and he says the writer got it “pretty bang on”.
Humour is an important vehicle for the play, but the underlying kaupapa is something that Te Wehi feels deeply.
“Creating a society that honours Te Tiriti is creating a fair and just society as a whole.”
He says that people can “expect to have a laugh, in a really thought-provoking way”.
“There’s a lot of different threads it pulls on.”
Before his action at Te Papa, Te Wehi made headlines in Motueka, where he lived for more than four years with his partner Hannah and their three young children.
Distressed by the planned removal of 13 golden elms down Motueka’s High Street in 2021, the passionate environmentalist and animal rights activist climbed one of the trees to stage a tree-sit protest.
The tree removal – like the Te Papa protest – was divisive, and thrust Te Wehi into the spotlight – something the self-proclaimed introvert says he finds conversely more comfortable than holding space in a social setting.
He says in a way, radical activism is therapeutic; an antidote against “just how unfair our society is”.
‘ration the Queen’s veges’ is performing at the Suter Theatre, on Sunday, 26 October, at 7.30pm. Tickets can be purchased at nz.patronbase.com/_NelsonArtsFestival
