Year 9 Social Studies · Te Kura Tuarua o Fraser
Whose eyes are you going to see it through?
Members of the Māori Pioneer Battalion, France, 30 June 1918. National Library NZ / Alexander Turnbull Library, CC BY-SA 2.0.
What you are working towards
Today you meet all four. You are collecting evidence, not choosing yet.
The skill
What you think about the war, sitting in this classroom in 2026.
What they thought, built out of their whole life: where they lived, what they owned, what had been done to their family.
Nobody in these photographs knows how it ends.
Voice one
He volunteered. August 1914.
It is September 1914. Why would you go?
Auckland, September 1914
The Auckland Mounted Rifles ride down Upper Symonds Street. The war is one month old.
Auckland Weekly News, 1 October 1914. Public domain.
The pressure, 1915
"Boys — come over here, you're wanted." A British recruitment poster. New Zealand was part of the Empire, and the same message reached here.
Imperial War Museum, PST 5165. Public domain. British poster, not a New Zealand one.
"Women of Britain say — GO!"
E. Kealey, 1915. If you stayed home, this is what you were told the women thought of you.
Eybl collection, Poster Museum Vienna. Public domain. British poster.
Hutt Valley, 14 April 1916
The New Zealand Division marches out of Trentham to embark for Europe. One of these men is W. J. Parker. He was killed at Passchendaele the following year.
Phillip Capper, CC BY 2.0.
This is what he was promised would be over by Christmas.
Quinn's Post, Gallipoli, 1915
New Zealand soldiers digging bombproof shelters. Deadman's Ridge on the skyline.
CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.
In the trench, Gallipoli, 1915
Look at his face, not the trench.
Public domain via Flickr Commons.
"Coming out", 1915
What was left of the Auckland Mounted Rifles after the Battle of Hill 60. Compare these men with the ones riding down Symonds Street.
Official War History of the Auckland Mounted Rifles Regiment. Public domain.
20 October 1917
The survivors of Walter Parker's company, Otago Infantry Regiment, after Passchendaele. Walter Parker took this photograph's place in the line. He was killed the next day.
Phillip Capper, CC BY 2.0. The Otago Regiment suffered a higher proportion of casualties at Passchendaele than any other New Zealand unit.
Voice two
His name came out of a ballot. He had no choice.
Volunteering was no longer enough.
Military Service Act, 1916
The first conscription ballot was drawn on 16 November 1916. From then on, a man's name could simply be pulled out and he had to go.
CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr. A film of the first ballot survives at nzhistory.govt.nz.
Joseph Herbert Jones, 1918
A Wellington labourer. In January 1917 he stood in Dixon Street and told 500 people to resist conscription. He was tried for sedition. This is his police photograph.
1918 Police Gazette. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.
An arrest warrant, 1915
Opposing the war became a crime. This is the police paperwork for Philip Josephs, watched by the government for speaking against conscription.
CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.
Voice four
He told Māori to enlist. He had a reason.
Āpirana Turupa Ngata, c.1905
Taken around the time he entered Parliament as the Member for Eastern Māori. He is about 31.
Alexander Turnbull Library, 35mm-00094-D-F. Public domain.
Four years before the war.
Ngata, 1910
A lawyer, an MP, and the first Māori to complete a degree at a New Zealand university.
Alexander Turnbull Library, 1/1-001566-G. Public domain.
Inside his house, Waiomatatini, c.1910
A piano. Tukutuku panels. A kahu huruhuru over the back of a chair. Both worlds, in one room.
Alexander Turnbull Library. Public domain.
Arihia Kane Ngata
His wife. She ran Waiomatatini and the wider work of the community while he was in Wellington.
Te Ara / Alexander Turnbull Library. Public domain.
What he did
Te Ara / DNZB (Sorrenson 1996) · NZHistory, Māori objection to conscription. Both verbatim. Ngāti Porou sent "more than their share of Māori volunteers."
His reason
NZHistory's summary of the Ngata–Pōmare position on conscription, 1917. Verbatim from the source — not Ngata's own words.
And the debt he collected afterwards: "After the war Ngata never lost an opportunity to remind Pākehā New Zealand of the debt the country owed to Māori who had served or died in the empire's foreign war." — DNZB
Where that debt led: the 1927 royal commission into the 1860s confiscations. Ngata and Pōmare obtained it.
Avondale Camp, Auckland, 1914
Recruits of the Māori Contingent perform a haka at the Auckland Domain. These men volunteered.
Photographed 19 November 1914. Public domain.
Officers of the Māori Contingent, 1915
Published in the Auckland Weekly News, 2 September 1915, after Gallipoli.
Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, CC BY 3.0.
Te Hokowhitu-a-Tū
The Māori Contingent became the New Zealand (Māori) Pioneer Battalion. Pioneers dug the trenches, built the roads and bridges, and strung the wire — usually within range of the guns.
Near Gommecourt, France, 25 July 1918
Members of the Māori Pioneer Battalion take a break from improving a trench.
Henry Armytage Sanders, official NZ war photographer. National Library NZ, no known copyright restrictions.
Near Colincamps, 21 April 1918
Building a barbed wire entanglement on open ground. In daylight. In the open.
Henry Armytage Sanders. National Library NZ, no known copyright restrictions.
What are they talking about?
Colincamps, the Somme, 1 April 1918
Māori Pioneers waiting for their evening meal to be cooked.
Henry Armytage Sanders. National Library NZ, no known copyright restrictions.
Bayencourt, France, 28 July 1918
Sharpening a hatchet on a grindstone in camp.
Henry Armytage Sanders. National Library NZ, no known copyright restrictions.
Pont-à-Pierre, France, late 1918
A bridge over the St George River, built by B Company of the Māori Pioneer Battalion. They built it. It held.
Henry Armytage Sanders. Public domain.
Bois-de-Warnimont, France, 30 June 1918
The Pioneer Battalion performs a haka for Prime Minister William Massey. Four months later the war ended.
National Library NZ / Alexander Turnbull Library, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Voice three
She refused. She also had a reason.
Te Puea Hērangi, c.1900–1908
Granddaughter of King Tāwhiao. Photographed as a young woman, in front of carving, before any of this happened.
National Library NZ. Public domain.
Why she refused
In June 1917 that same Crown extended conscription to Māori — in one district only: Waikato-Maniapoto. "Allen knew that this was the heartland of the resistance."
The only Māori conscripted were the ones whose land had been taken.
Confiscation figure: nzhistory.govt.nz (rounded — say so). June 1917, Waikato-Maniapoto only, and the Allen quotation: NZHistory, Māori objection to conscription, verbatim.
Her reason, in her grandfather's words
Te Puea held Waikato to that. Waikato had "its own King" and no need to "fight for the British King."
And she left a door open: if the confiscated land was returned, Waikato might reconsider.
NZHistory, Māori objection to conscription — quoted phrases verbatim. She also wrote her refusal into waiata: E huri rā koe, Kāti nei e te iwi te kumekume roa, Ngā rā o Hune ka ara te pakanga (DNZB, King 1996).
What they called her
Her grandfather's surname was Searancke. That was enough for the newspapers. Te Puea answered that the Searanckes were four generations from Germany — and that the British royal family itself was German.
Colonel Patterson of the Auckland Military District wanted her prosecuted for "inciting men not to enlist" and planned to goad her into saying it in front of witnesses.
NZHistory, Māori objection to conscription, verbatim. In 1916 police had shot and killed two Māori arresting Rua Kēnana at Maungapōhatu. "The government did not want more bloodshed."
11 June 1918 · Te Paina, Mangatāwhiri
NZHistory, Māori objection to conscription. Quoted phrases verbatim. 552 Māori were called up; by 1919 only 74 had gone to camp. None went overseas.
Thirty years later, 1944
Te Puea Hērangi (front) with King Korokī and Te Atairangikaahu, receiving the Governor-General. She outlasted the accusation.
Auckland Libraries. Public domain.
Te Puea Memorial Marae, Māngere, today
Named for her. About 25 minutes up the motorway from this classroom.
CC BY-SA 4.0.
One more thing
"It was the start of a long friendship between Te Puea and Ngata." He named the house Māhinārangi. In 1931, when she fought a Pākehā supervisor on her land scheme, Ngata sacked the man and put her in his place.
Two Māori leaders. Opposite answers to the same war. Not enemies.
DNZB, both biographies (King 1996; Sorrenson 1996). Verbatim.
Something you should notice
The government sent an official photographer to France to photograph the men who went. Nobody was sent to photograph the men who refused.
History is not only what happened. It is what somebody chose to keep.
Before you write
"I signed up in 1914, but I knew it would be four years of pointless slaughter."
"I signed up in 1914. They said we would be home by Christmas and I believed them."
If your writing knows how the war ends, you have stopped being that person and gone back to being you.
Now choose
Four New Zealanders. One war.
None of them thought they were the villain.
Take your Evidence Bank. Pick your voice.
Kaiako notes · not for projection
Every image in this deck was licence-verified against Wikimedia Commons metadata (public domain, CC BY, CC BY-SA, or Flickr Commons "no known copyright restrictions") and visually checked before use. Full credits: /portfolio/images/ww1/attribution.json.
Deliberate gaps. There is no verified portrait of Archibald Baxter here — the one on Commons could not be confirmed as the objector rather than a namesake, so it was left out rather than risk showing the class the wrong man. For Baxter and for Spencer Westmacott, use Te Papa's Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War (Westmacott is the first of the eight Weta Workshop figures) and NZHistory.
No invented quotations. Ngata's argument on slide 22 is labelled as a paraphrase. Nothing is put in Te Puea's mouth anywhere.
Two recruitment posters are British, not New Zealand, and are captioned as such.
Handle with care. These are photographs of tūpuna, shown to a class that includes their descendants. Say so at the start of the Te Puea section. Nobody should be called on.