A few weeks ago, Act Party MP Mark Cameron called out the Auckland War Memorial Museum/Tāmaki Paenga Hira for being “divisive and disrespectful” with its plan to become a tikanga-led “social impact organisation”.
The plan “stinks of the politically-correct mission creep that already besets too many of our public institutions”, he declared. It’s “gibberish” and will turn the museum into “a woke political organisation”.
The plan he was complaining about commits the museum to “partner with tāngata whenua to authentically represent te ao Māori and care for and conserve taonga”. It also says the museum will “explore warfare’s impact on Māori” and “expand the Matariki celebrations”.
As a war memorial museum, Tāmaki Paenga Hira believes honouring the contributions of Māori is part of its central purpose.
Public submissions were invited, meetings were held. “Sack the pathetic woke activists,” responded one woman, although she confessed she had never visited the museum and didn’t plan to.
Another said, “There is absolutely no need to be Te Tiriti-led. It’s a museum for all of NZ. Stop the activism … and be a museum.”
Museum leaders were called “politically correct snowflakes” who “lacked impartiality”.
“It’s a war museum! Not a woke museum,” wrote one person.
But what is a war museum? And, a week on from Anzac Day, what should a war museum in this country commemorate?
At King’s College in Ōtāhuhu, the traditional Anzac Day address this year was given by Grant McCallum, an old boy of the school who last year became the MP for Northland, representing the National Party. He told the students about the Māori Battalion in World War II.
“What was the cost of the war to Māori?” he asked. “In total, almost 3500 men served overseas with the 28th Māori Battalion. 649 were killed, 1712 were wounded, and 237 were prisoners of war. In the words of Lieutenant General Bernard Freyberg, who commanded the 2nd New Zealand Division, ‘No infantry battalion had a more distinguished record or saw more fighting, or, alas, had such heavy casualties as the Māori Battalion.’”
Archives New Zealand says about 18.5 per cent of the troops of the Māori Battalion gave their lives in that war, compared with 10.5 per cent of all New Zealand servicemen. Māori communities lost a generation of leaders.
There is a museum in McCallum’s electorate that commemorates this sacrifice: Te Rau Aroha, on the Treaty Grounds at Waitangi. It was officially opened during the treaty celebrations in 2020 and is dedicated to “the contribution of Māori to their country’s involvement in many theatres of war since 1840″.
You can learn there about the land wars of the 1860s, the Māori contribution to the Boer War at the start of the 20th century and World War I, which followed shortly after. There’s a special focus on the Māori Battalion’s A Company in World War II, which drew its members from Te Tai Tokerau, the combined iwi of Northland.
The museum is named after the YMCA-gifted truck that followed the battalion around, stocked with memories of home and paid for with funds raised by the children of the “native schools”. Te Rau Aroha translates as “the token of love”. The truck itself is owned by the Army Museum in Waiouru.
Te Rau Aroha, the museum, is beautiful, and rich in history and personal reflection. There are walls covered in portraits, some with no names, some just with blurred silhouettes where one day, it’s hoped, photos will go. Many visitors are surprised how much is still not known about the men who went to war.
In 1940, Sir Āpirana Ngata, formerly a government minister, had exhorted Māori to sign up. He called it “the price of citizenship”.
In effect, this was Ngata’s expression of faith in article three of the Treaty of Waitangi, which guarantees Māori all the same “rights and privileges” as British subjects. With rights come responsibilities, he argued.
“We will lose some of the most promising of our young leaders,” Ngata wrote. “But we will gain the respect of our Pākehā brothers and the future of our race as a component and respected part of the New Zealand people will be less precarious.”
McCallum told the King’s College students something of how that worked out. Māori veterans had trouble entering the ballots for farms. Their veterans’ pay rates were less than those of Pākehā veterans. They were even prevented from joining or entering some RSA clubrooms unless they had been an officer.
“Despite [the] high praise from Freyberg and their fellow soldiers,” said McCallum, “the Māori veterans returned to a country that was still racially divided. In the post-war years, Māori continued to suffer from discrimination, lack of opportunities and the effects of unjust government policies.”
He told the story of Lieutenant-Colonel (later Sir) James Henare, who had led the Māori Battalion and at the end of the war toured marae all over the country to honour the soldiers and rally support for the country’s post-war economic effort.
At his home town of Kawakawa, said McCallum, “The only Māori veteran who was allowed into the RSA was Sir James. Consequently, he refused to go in. It was not until 1985, a full 40 years after the end of World War II, that an apology was made, and all veterans of the Māori Battalion were allowed into the Kawakawa RSA.”
Mark Cameron, the Act MP outraged by the Auckland War Memorial Museum today, was a teenager in Northland in 1985. That’s the world he grew up in.
In 2014 in Ōtorohanga, students at the local college discovered there was much about their own local history they didn’t know. So they got up a pitihana, or petition, to call for a national day of commemoration to mark the New Zealand Wars and to ask that the history of these wars be taught in schools and to local communities. Twelve-thousand people signed.
“It’s shocking to hear that there were massacres half an hour from where you live, not that long ago,” said student Leah Bell.
When the students presented their pitihana at Parliament in 2015, they were joined by 1500 supporters, including representatives from Tainui, Ngāti Porou and Ngāi Tūhoe.
The next year, the National-led Government established Te Pūtake o te Riri, He Rā Maumahara: the national commemoration the students had asked for. The location varies each year; the first was held in Russell, known in Treaty of Waitangi times as Kororāreka.
The official day is October 28, which is the anniversary of the signing in 1835 of He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tirene: the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand.
He Whakaputanga acknowledged Māori exercised rangatiratanga, or chieftainship, over the motu. Five years later, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Māori-language version of the treaty, did the same.
In 2019, the Labour-led Government also responded to the Otorohanga students’ petition: it announced that the New Zealand Wars and their aftermath would become a compulsory subject in schools. A new curriculum including this was introduced in 2023.
He Rā Maumahara means a day of remembering. Te Pūtake o Te Riri means “the messenger whose task is to awaken the memory and conscience of a sleeping nation”.
At King’s College on Anzac Day, McCallum said there was more to remember. “Many Māori veterans were so embarrassed by their treatment that they refused to accept their war medals. It wasn’t until very recently that the government finally awarded these medals to the surviving veterans and their families. So, while we united as a country to fight against a common enemy in several wars, the challenge to be a united country continues.”
Back in 1945, Bishop Wiremu Panapa had a message for the returned troops. He said, “Let it be that those of you who have seen evil speak of good.”
Te Rau Aroha was built in that spirit, as a labour of love and of urgency: the whole thing took just one year. The architects, builders and all the other people involved were Northland locals. The regional development minister at the time, NZ First’s Shane Jones, steered the project with a passion.
Panapa’s words were repeated during the opening ceremony. It was an event rich in national symbolism. One example: four people cut the ribbon together.
Sir Robert “Bom” Gillies, now 99 years old and the Māori Battalion’s only survivor, was one of them. He’s a man with soft, sad eyes and a delicate smile beneath a crinkly toothbrush moustache. Gillies was joined by Sir Willie Apiata VC, the governor-general and the prime minister.
The chiefs of all three branches of the armed forces sat together in the crowd. Their appearance was also symbolic: they each wore a treasured korowai, or feathered cloak.
During the ceremony, Ngāpuhi leader Matt Te Pou introduced another meaning for Te Rau Aroha. He called it the “Generosity of the Heart”.
The Auckland War Memorial Museum/Tāmaki Paenga Hira might say that sentiment guides them too.