Spirits Bay – a granddaughter’s story

Sheridan Waitai was raised by one of the country’s great campaigners, Saana Murray, to remember a people who had been lost. Saana Murray, like Dame Whina Cooper, was one of the great kuia who led the tino rangitiratanga movement. Waitai talks about how her iwi, Ngati Kuri, was driven from their homeland at Kapowairua, now called Spirit’s Bay. She tells of Saana Murray’s last great protest when her grandchildren carried her body back to Kapowairua, in defiance of the Department of Conservation, to bury her on their land.