Born and raised in Te Hāpua to Rapine and Ngaio Norman, Saana Waitai Murray was a renowned master weaver and tireless Tiriti o Waitangi activist descended from Ngāti Kurī. Growing up, she was the eldest of fourteen children, attending schools in Te Hāpua and Ngataki before going on to study nursing in Auckland. Saana then moved to Kaitaia with her husband, Tupari Waitai, and together they had five children. In 1952, she suffered the immense grief of losing her pāpā, her husband, and one of her children all within the same year, but her resillience and kaha was all-encompassing and she strived to channel her sadness into positivity.
Returning to Auckland, Saana later married Nicholas Murray and they worked hard to provide for their growing family. Thoughout the 1970s, she was a Māori Studies teacher at Hillary College. Saana enjoyed guiding rangatahi – both in school with her students and at home with her whānau – because she so valued the preservation and passing on of ancestral knowledge, especially within those urban Māori who had been separated from their marae. Her ultimate desire was to build a whare taonga, an outpost school, where young people disconnected from their whenua could reconnect back to the kāinga.
“…if they do not associate with their land, they will not have that tree of knowledge—that the land first and foremost gives you life. Survival is in the land and in the sea.”
Saana posessed a deep knowledge of te ao Māori, particularly within the arts. Taught by her parents and kuia, she was a master weaver. Wherever Saana went, she always carried weaving materials like pīngao, harakeke, or kōrari with her. She taught many people to weave and encouraged them to use their weaving skills for the betterment of themselves, te taiao, and Māori everywhere.
Saana was also a writer, producing waiata and poetry in both English and te reo Māori. In 1974, Māori Organisation on Human Rights published Te Karanga a Te Kotuku: Some Records of the Land Struggle of Saana Murray and her people of Te Hiku o Te Ika, which includes letters and poems written by Saana expressing her people’s struggle for land rights. This launched within an era of Māori cultural renaissance, catalysing the 1975 Māori land march against the continual confiscation of Māori land, which left from Saana’s home of Te Hāpua.
“…she brought with her a deep knowledge of Māori arts, particularly weaving and that this expertise combined with an unflappable commitment to protecting taonga Māori made her a treasured artist.” (Patricia Wallace)
Written by Lily Kara-Liu (Waikato-Tainui, Ngāpuhi). 03 Feb 2023.