KEY POINTS:
Multiple cases of mistaken identity used to result in Green Party MP Metiria Turei being invited to numerous events.
While the 38-year-old can laugh about it now, at the time it was mortifying for everyone involved.
"People always used to think I was [Maori Party co-leader] Tariana [Turia].
"I was just really sad for those people because they would be disappointed and embarrassed. And I didn't want to disappoint them."
The senior party MP, ranked fourth on the list and Maori and Treaty issues spokesman, has worked hard since she entered Parliament in 2002 to raise her profile among Maori.
The confusion for Maori about who she is didn't stop there.
"I wasn't involved in government departments, I don't have a huge family name - most people think I'm related to Sir John Turei, so there's been some misunderstanding around that. I wasn't part of the Maori intelligentsia.
"It's so funny, I always think if we'd never been colonised I'd still be as working class as I am now."
But over the past three years, her vocal opposition to the Foreshore and Seabed legislation, and her fisheries and treaty stands have built the former lawyer a stronger profile.
One day, she plans to take a tilt at party leadership - once Jeanette Fitzsimons retires as co-leader.
For the past two elections she's stood in Maori seats, first in Tamaki Makaurau then in 2005 in Te Tai Tonga - a decision she says led to some unpleasant fallout from Maori Party members.
That was because some "mistakenly" believed that candidate Monty Ohia would have beaten Labour's Mahara Okeroa, if it hadn't been for Metiria siphoning off votes.
The 2296 votes she took wouldn't have been enough to beat Mr Okeroa's 9015.
As the Maori Party pushes to win the seven electorates, the "political trap" of one party thinking that because voters are Maori they should vote for them, could take people back to the days when Labour had a stranglehold on the electorates.
"There is an assumption that the Maori Party is the only Maori vehicle in parliament. But we're as entitled in the Maori seats to strong competition of ideas and people as any other seats."
This election, the Greens are standing candidates in three Maori electorates - Te Tai Tonga, Tamaki Makaurau and Ikaroa-Rawhiti. But in a nod to the party's working relationship with the Maori Party, she won't be standing in Te Tai Tonga, instead she'll be standing in Dunedin North, a "concession" she said she's thought long and hard about.
There are good reasons why Maori should make their vote Green, she said. The party had high regard for treaty rights, has strong social-liberal policy and its environmental record dovetailed with kaitiaki values.
While the perennial issues are still part of the electoral landscape, she said Maori understand that collectives matter. Put bluntly, seven potential Green MPs working with the Maori Party could form an important bloc.
