Te Moana Nui a Kiwa by Michel Tuffery

The ocean is central here, or is it the sky? Ancestors drove their waka across both, with star navigators placing signposts for their descendants on earth and sea. A twin-hulled blue-sea waka hourua breasts the swirling currents of Moana Nui a Kiwa and the great night sky, like a pair of whales in tandem. Tere tohorā, tere tangata—where whales journey, people follow—encapsulates the essence of this synergy, while a bronze whaler swims beneath and the sun rises and sets.

Fine fronds in the earthy colours of seaweed enclose a circle of chiefly figures in radial feather headdresses, pushing upwards like the arches of the heavens. Each holds a treasure—an eel, a turtle, a stingray, a tuna, a crab, a bird, a string of fish. Here are our responsibilities to our ancestors and to our environment, to a whakapapa of endless beginnings and irreducible currents and connections.
*Quote attributed to Moana Jackson.