Norma Hera Graham was born in Arowhenua, a direct descendant of Te Maiharoa and Horomona Pohio, the Kai Tahu chief of Arowhenua and Waimate. She was educated at Temuka Primary School. She worked as a cook general at Waimate Waiho Forks and then went into the Armed Forces for three years and worked in camp equipment. She married Ronald Robert Graham and has two sons and a daughter and five grandchildren. She lived for ten years at a Ministry of Works Camp near the Hermitage and then moved with her husband to Arowhenua. As a child, she wrote a about the outlook from Mt Cook to the sea and she has also written a non-fiction article for Te Karanga. She is a member of the Arowhenua Branch of Māori Women’s Welfare League and was formerly the branch secretary. She was a member of the Women’s Division at Pukaki and has been actively involved in netball teams in the Army and for Huirapa.
Biographical sources
- Phone conversation with Norma Hera Graham, 16 July 1998.
- Te Karanga: Canterbury Māori Studies Association 4.1 (May 1988): 25.
Non-fiction
- "The Waitangi Tribunal at Arowhenua." Te Karanga: Canterbury Māori Studies Association 4.1 (1988): 24-25.
- An account of the Waitangi Tribunal hearing at Arowhenua Marae.
Other
- "Flatties." Te Karanga: Canterbury Māori Studies Association 5.1 (1989): 3.
- Responding to an article in Te Karanga 4.4 which described the flat-bottomed boats used at Lake Ellesmere, Hera Graham writes of the flat-bottomed boat which her father used to go to the Opihi mouth for whitebaiting, eeling and floundering.