Sandra Heihei is the 17th generation of her family living in remote Taemaro Bay. She and her husband Alfonso live off grid and are among kaitiaki of this ancestral coastal land. Passing on knowledge of and respect for the whenua is her goal.

In the Far North, a rough road snakes its way through bush between the harbours of Mangonui and Whangaroa on the region's eastern coast.

After a while, the road dips steeply down to the coastline and Taemaro Bay.

Here, there are a few off-grid homes dotted among the pōhutukawa trees and in one of them you'll find Sandra and Alfonso Heihei.

Meet Sandra and Alfonso Heihei of Taemaro Bay on Country Life

On the beach of this remote scallop-shaped cove you might find the couple walking the dog or having a cup of tea on the beach, just metres from their house.

Alfonso (Ngāpuhi) is the great-grandson of a whaler who jumped ship near Kerikeri, to whom he can trace his native American roots.

Sandra (Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa) can trace her roots 16 generations back to Te Māmaru, the waka carrying migrants who settled this area.

Taemaro was once a busy place and Sandra knows it well - where the food gardens, the māra kai, once were, where her tūpuna lived at the the pā kainga, and where the whalers landed their catch, a shingly bay where you can still see the ship nails hammered into the rocks.

Each little inlet and hilltop has a name.

"There's always a kōrero to a name and a meaning.

"Underneath the scrub you would see platforms and terraces and pits and that's where the old people used to live," she tells Country Life, pointing out areas to her left and right now covered in vegetation.

The dunes forming a platform on the edge of the golden sand were formed by a tsunami in the 1800s, and used for storing kumara and rīwai on beds of fern, she says.

"It's a place where the old people used to do their living really, their mahi to live. They grew their food, they did their gardening, they harvested their korari, their flaxes, and they just lived and breathed the land that's here."

The majority of their land was taken, apart from land reserved for them in 1865. A marae was built "so the old people could have a voice" to try to protect their burial sites, their food gardens, their resources.

The Catholic church became integral to the community, Sandra says, and a church and school were built too. They were later moved to near Kaeo where there were more resources for the children and the community.

Everything used to be done in a sustainable manner and she is saddened to see commercial longliners constantly out fishing. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details