Maori Party president Naida Glavish says getting Tame Iti onto the party list is a great endorsement for the cause.

The Tuhoe activist, artist and health worker isn’t standing for a seat, but he’s agreed to throw his weight behind candidates Te Ururoa Flavell in Waiariki and Rangi Mclean in Tamaki Makaurau.

Ms Glavish says he epitomises what the party is about.

"Everything he does he does because he can live in his own skin in terms of his committment to being Tuhoe, doing his art, doing the health, being Tuhoe, in Tuhoe, just a wonderful, absolutely wonderful example," she says.

Naida Glavish says things move fast in politics, and the events of seven years ago when Tame Iti was painted by police as a major threat to society seem a distant memory.

FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH NAIDA GLAVISH CLICK ON THE LINK