Notes attached verso read: The Land is Ours portrays two iconic Maori figures, Sir Kingi Matutaera Ihaka (1921 - 1993), a New Zealand clerk, interpreter, Anglican priest, broadcaster and maori language commissioner appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1970 Queen's Birthday Honours, for services to the Anglican Maori Church Of Maori descent, he identified with the Te Aupouri iwi.

The other figure is Dame Whina Cooper (1895 - 1994). During September and October 1975, the nearly eighty year old Cooper became nationally recognised, walking at the head of the Maori land march from Te Hapua to Wellington. She was made a Dame Commander in the Order of the British Empire in 1981 and a member of the Order of New Zealand in 1991.

Born in Auckland in 1942, Buck Nin Ngati Ruakawa, Ngati Toa taught art at Hamilton College for more than twenty years. He graduated from the University of Canterbury in 1965, later gaining a Masters in Education from the University of Hawaii, then a Doctorate in Fine Arts from Texas Technical University. In the 1970s he tirelessly campaigned to raise the profile of Maori Art. Dr Buck Nin's work was inspired by both his Maori and Chinese ancestry. His work is in the collections of University of Hawaii, Te Papa, The New Dowse, Manawatu Art Gallery, COCA, Aigantighe Art Museum, Rotorua Museum of Art and History and Waikato Museum of Art and History.

Buck Nin became a major force in the contemporary Maori art movement with his strongly individual style of painting, his teaching, and his willingness to work with people from all walks of life. Buck was a larger than life person not only because of his physical size but also because of his considerable intellect, his energy, his powerful and often large paintings and his commitment to the development of art and its people. The imagery in the work of Buck Nin is drawn from Maori carving, weaving and rafter patterns, spread across a minimalist landscape, like a sacred cloak, warming, embracing and caressing the earth. This is his Maori earth Papatuanuku.

History will show him as one of Maoridom's and subsequently New Zealand's great contemporary artists... Friend and fellow artist, Darcy Nicholas