A couple who falsely used the identities of two Māori to make it look like it was them delivering a politically charged message are fighting to keep their names secret. 

In a lengthy sentencing today the pair's efforts to seek a discharge without conviction and continued name suppression failed, but they immediately appealed against the suppression order being lifted. 

The pair were initially charged last May with obstructing the course of justice and had since admitted an alternative charge each of making available false documents. The charges were linked to flyers the pair made and distributed to Nelson businesses that included threats that people would be "hunted down" for appropriating Māori culture. The flyers featured the faces of Māori academic Atama Moa, and television personality and tikanga Māori and kapa haka exponent, known then as Shane Te Hāmua Wilkins-Nikora. 

But neither knew anything about it, nor did they live in Nelson where the material was distributed in November 2020. 

The pair responsible for distributing the pamphlets were caught after police got CCTV footage of two people in disguise, posting them to businesses and organisations in central Nelson. 

A couple who delivered flyers to businesses in central Nelson by night, which falsely used the identities of two men, are fighting to keep their names suppressed. Photo / Tracy Neal 

In the Nelson District Court today their lawyer, Michael Vesty, argued their actions were in response to threats and intimidation aimed at them, and that their safety was at risk if their names were to be published. 

Both the Crown prosecutor, Jeremy Cameron, and Judge Jo Rielly said the pair failed to reach the thresholds for which a discharge without conviction would apply, or the reasons why suppression would continue. 

Judge Rielly convicted the pair, but without further penalty to reflect the hardship the pair had already suffered and because they were at low risk of reoffending. 
 
The Nelson Weekly reported in November 2020 that local organisations were left on edge by the flyer left outside their doors, which featured words including "confront those who abuse our culture … hunt them down". 
 
"Whoever has done this has taken my identity, taken my whakaaro, taken my beliefs, and done something really ugly with it," Te Hāmua Wilkins-Nikora told the Breeze radio station at the time. 

"It's been made to look like I'm a Pākehā hater and I'm trying to drum up some sort of hate against Pākehā businesses. Straight up, I don't like cultural appropriation, but I'm not a Pākehā hater." 

Te Hāmua Wilkins-Nikora said then that while some of the words had been taken from his social media accounts, the pamphlets were not his "style". 

"If I was to make a pamphlet, I'm the type of person that would knock on your door, hand it to you and talk to you about it. I wouldn't sneak in under the veil of night." 

A spokeswoman for a Nelson artists' space and gallery told the Weekly last year that the poster left on a window was intimidating. 

"When I saw it, I thought 'what have we culturally appropriated'. My first instinct was to have a conversation with them," said Janja Heathfield of the Refinery Artspace. 
 
Then, it became stranger when she found out it was not sent by whom it was purported to be from. 

"It felt a little intimidating when it was talking about hunting people down," she said. 

"But it wasn't clear whether they were trying to discredit those people or highlight that conversation. There are other ways to do it." 

Te Hāmua Wilkins-Nikora was approached by Open Justice for comment, prior to the sentencing. He was reluctant to say much beyond being "at a stage where petty shit like this makes me wonder what is wrong with people's heads". 

He preferred to follow progress through the court to see if the justice system might prove him wrong in terms of penalty for the offenders, but he did not hold out much hope. 

- by Tracy Neal, Open Justice