Dame Whina Cooper

📍West Coast Road, Panguru, Hokianga, Northland 0473, New Zealand

“My home for many years was at Panguru, on the West Coast Road above the Hokianga Harbour, where my husband William and I raised our children. It was a real country house — a wood stove, a storeroom, a house cow, a vegetable garden, and the rose garden my father tended. It was, as my daughter Hinerangi would remember it, "a nice house and a peaceful home". The low land flooded often, and after William died suddenly in 1949 I sold the house and took the family to Auckland. But the Hokianga never let me go. From this far-northern country — Te Rarawa whenua of harbour and hills — came the strength that carried me, decades later, at the head of the great land march, walking so that not one more acre of Māori land would be lost.”

Sources: te ao Māori News (2024), "Mum would've loved that": teaonews.co.nz — Wikipedia: Whina Cooper