The Whale Rider

A 1001 CBYMRBYGU.
Kahu was born into a world that did not want a female chief. Her great-grandfather, the current chief, like all the others in her tribe, ignores her, despite obvious signs of her chief-ish qualities.

From page 64: He (Kingi) used to tell me that his favorite image of Australia was of Joan Sutherland singing “Advance Australia Fair,” a can of Foster's in one hand, and surfing into Sydney Harbor like “an antipodean Statue of Liberty.”

Kahu's grandfather: “Our Koro was like an old whale stranded in an alien present, but that was how it was supposed to be, because he also had his role in the pattern of things, in the tides of the future.”

I loved the way Kahu pulled the stone from the bottom of the water, the dolphins that swam around her, the whales beaching themselves, and the appearance of the tattooed whale.