Hone Harawira has been singing the same waiata since the 1970s, even as a youthful member of the first modern Maori protest group, Nga Tamatoa, a classic hit about the Treaty of Waitangi.
If the record is by now double-tracking, more than a trifle worn and showing a few scratches, it is still an error to assume it will be thrown away.
He was among those who stood in protest at Bastion Point, was the leader of the Waitangi Action Committee which sought legislative recognition for treaty rights, led He Taua against racism while a student at the University of Auckland and, most prominently, led the hikoi objecting to the Foreshore and Seabed Act, which effectively launched the Maori Party.
He helped write the party's constitution, built its Tehiku branch into a membership of more than 1000, and was elected MP for Tai Tokerau in 2005.
It is also unwise to underestimate Mr Harawira's energy and commitment to a cause.
But commitment to what cause? In his maiden speech to Parliament in 2005, when a Labour-led coalition was in power, he declared: "...I am not here to validate a parliamentary process that denies my people the opportunities they deserve.
"We are being denied that opportunity by a government that treats us like sheep to be herded from one place to another, that keeps us dependent on welfare, and that seeks even to determine our path to prosperity".
His suspension on Monday from the caucus of the party he helped found was based, in part, on what the leaders described as a "five-year legacy of ill-discipline". The vehicle of his political aspirations, which gained effective power only in coalition with the National Party, hence has served his individualistic ambitions.
Quite where they may lead is yet to become clear. Mr Harawira may not fully know them himself.
The official goodwill and somewhat generally romantic notions associated with the treaty settlement process overlook uncomfortable historical realities. There is not and never has been a "Maori" nation, and what exists today is a loose community of mixed-race people, many of whom proudly align their ethnicity with one or more ancestral tribes.
The settlement arrangements are not with "Maori" but with individual iwi, and some have done much better than others. The process can be considered as divisive within Maori, but one with political benefits.
One of the "tribes" so obviously excluded from the settlements is urban Maori, whose members do not choose (or have lost) tribal affiliation. This is a cause of resentment upon which Mr Harawira has built part of his career. Nor, as a representative of populous Northland Maori, has he been slow to exploit the envy and division brought about by southern treaty settlements.
He has been spoken of as the potential leader of a new political party, a kind of hybrid working class, Green, urban Maori grouping.
It is noteworthy that in one of the debates at Waitangi last weekend he suggested the Maori Party should discuss a strategic alliance with the Greens, which would prevent National and Labour from governing alone. An examination of the Green Party's policies shows why he finds comfort in them.
The Maori Party's co-leaders have emphasised that its alliance with National has brought results that would not otherwise have occurred, but their suspended colleague reads this as a "sell-out".
He claims his supporters agree National is using the Maori Party, backed by the so-called iwi elite and Maori corporates which have evolved from tribes that have achieved settlements, as an electorally convenient vehicle for slowing progress in dealing with the problems faced daily by those who occupy the bottom ranks of the socio-economic scale.
He will now claim the Maori Party has left him, rather than the reverse, as did that other inconveniently independent MP, Jim Anderton, when he left the Labour Party to found New Labour.
Winston Peters provides a similar maverick model.
Mr Harawira enjoys strong support in his electorate and probably could rely on a majority, should he choose to stand as an independent in November campaigning on the theme that the Maori Party has succumbed to the baubles of office. If elected, he might then hope to find himself being courted for his parliamentary vote by National and Labour.
That, it must be assumed, is his strategy and perhaps explains his actions of the past 12 months. On the other hand, he may just be another attention-seeking political malcontent. If the Maori Party expels him, Northland Maori - and the Harawira clan will have their martyr.
