The people are gone and gasping for breath. In this Ngāti Maru lament, we are haunted by the intense sense of loss, discontent, and disconnection that generations of Ngāti Maru whānau and hapū have borne. Ngāti Maru is an iwi whose area of interest extends from Mount Taranaki east to the upper Whanganui River, and north-east to the Waitara River. However, Ngāti Maru were left virtually landless and their people displaced and dispersed. It is those wrongs that we seek to acknowledge today and set right through the settlement.