Tāhere Tikitiki - The Making of a Māori Canoe

To learn is to respect, to participate in a heritage. So let us take this canoe as a symbol of collective spirit.

– Narrator Harry Dansey

Probably the first National Film Unit film to pass beyond the Integration Myth and begin an overt dichotomizing of Māori and Pākehā cultures.

– Martin Blythe, Naming of the Other: Images of the Maori in New Zealand Film and Television

That sense of belonging, when your ancestors are present, and being proud of a civilisation which for the Māori leads back beyond the great ocean migration from Hawaiiki and beyond.

– Narrator Harry Dansey, on the importance of waka building process