NYNZ – Ihimaera on

Whale Rider author and ex-diplomat to the US Witi Ihimaera interviewed in New York – the city where he penned the story behind the award-winning film. “One morning I woke up to the sound of helicopters. A whale had come up the Hudson River. My thoughts went back to Whangara, on the east coast of the North Island, where my mother’s family came from, where we believe our first ancestor came to New Zealand on the back of a whale.”