Book review: Mana
Tame Iti with Toi Rakau Iti and Eugene Bingham
I te timatanga (the beginning)
The mist met the mountain and they made love. Their love made us
and we all lived together in Te Urewera. We had everything we needed.
Food, water, shelter. Each other. We had mana. Those were the days.
Born in Ruatoki, Tohoe 1952, Tame Iti tells his life story with assistance from Toi Kai Rakau Iti, his younger son, and journalist Eugene Bingham. While the greater use is made of English, the same information is repeated in te Reo Maori. Both the English and Maori texts flow together.
Apart from the text, the pictures in the book include photographs, paintings by Tame Iti - totalling around sixty visuals - making a huge contribution to the story. It is not just the biography of Tame Iti but the bicultural history of Aotearoa from the 1950s to today. — John Thornley
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