Evidence Bank — WW1 Perspectives

Year 9 Social Sciences · one A4 landscape, double-sided, per student · fill it across all three lessons

How it works. Hand this out at slide 2 of the deck, before the first voice. Students add to it as each voice is met; they do not choose a voice until the end of lesson 3. The seeded lines are verbatim from the sources named — students may quote them, and must not "improve" them. The yellow row is the assessment's hidden criterion: a perspective written in 1917 cannot know 1918. Every seeded line was checked against Te Ara / DNZB or NZHistory on 29 August 2026.
Ingoa / NameAkomanga / ClassVoice I chose

The task for the term. Write about the war from the perspective of one of these four people: an enlisted New Zealand soldier, a conscripted New Zealand soldier, Te Puea Hērangi, or Āpirana Ngata. A perspective is what they thought, built out of their whole life — not your opinion in 2026. Collect evidence here first. Choose your voice last.

The enlisteevolunteered, 1914–15 The conscriptballoted, 1916–18 Te Puea HērangiWaikato · refused Āpirana NgataMP · urged enlistment
Where I stand
land, whānau, what happened to us		 Nobody made him go. Often young; often the first big journey of his life.deck, slides 4–11 Military Service Act 1916. First ballot drawn 16 Nov 1916. "His name came out of a ballot. He had no choice."deck, slide 14 1860s: the Crown invaded Waikato and confiscated ~1.2 million acres. She was raised with a "bitter, poignant memory" of it, from people who were there.DNZB (King 1996) Ngāti Porou kept their land: 156 flocks, 180,919 sheep by 1916. His great-uncle Rāpata Wahawaha fought for the Crown in the 1860s — "loyalty to the Crown and empire" was a family policy.DNZB (Sorrenson 1996)
What I did
dated actions		 552 Māori called up. By 1919 only 74 had gone to camp. Waikato men who refused: arrested, Narrow Neck camp, bread and water, some two years' hard labour.NZHistory, Māori objection to conscription Gathered the balloted men at Te Paina, Mangatāwhiri. 11 June 1918: police raid; "Nobody moved"; seven men carried out; the King's flag stepped over. She blessed the men and sat outside the prison so they could see her.NZHistory 1914: aged 40, a large family — "could hardly have served." Recruited instead. Native Contingent Committee: 150 recruits every four weeks. After Gallipoli, fought for a Māori battalion. 1917: wanted conscription applied to Māori too.DNZB; NZHistory
What I said
my own words, or my reason		 Joseph Herbert Jones, Wellington labourer, Jan 1917: told 500 people in Dixon Street to resist conscription. Tried for it.deck, slide 15 Tāwhiao made peace in 1881 and told Waikato to "lie down" and "not allow blood to flow from this time on." Waikato had "its own King" and no need to "fight for the British King." To the police, 1918: she feared no law "excepting the God of my ancestors."NZHistory (verbatim) "Māori blood had been spilt overseas, and Māori had a duty to respond; utu was required." (NZHistory's summary of his position — not his exact words.) His waiata Te Ope Tuatahi praised the iwi that sent men and named those that had not.NZHistory
What they called me Defaulter. Shirker. If a conscientious objector: "inciting men not to enlist" was a crime under the War Regulations.NZHistory "Seditious traitors." "German sympathiser" — her grandfather's surname was Searancke. Her answer: four generations from Germany, and the British royal family was German too.NZHistory (verbatim) Some iwi refused his call. At Waahi pā in 1918 Pōmare (his ally) was met with abusive haka and whakapohane. Ngata carried the same argument into that hostility.NZHistory
What I cannot know yet
write from inside the year		 In 1914: that it lasts four years. That Gallipoli fails. "They said we would be home by Christmas and I believed them." In 1917: that the war ends in Nov 1918. That no Waikato conscript will ever be sent overseas. That all Māori prisoners are quietly freed in May 1919. In 1918: that Waikato's men come home. That in 1927 Ngata will help build her carved house — "the start of a long friendship." That the 1995 settlement heals the wound. In 1917: that the debt he is banking will become the 1927 royal commission into the confiscations. That he will be knighted in 1927 — so "Sir Āpirana" in a 1915 letter is hindsight.

Writing from this bank — the three rules

  1. Stay inside the year. Pick a date for your piece (1914, 1916, 1917 or 1918) and write it at the top. Nothing in the yellow row for that date is allowed in. If your writing knows how the war ends, you have stopped being that person and gone back to being you.
  2. Two of your lines must come from the bank. Quote them or turn them into the person's own thoughts — but do not improve them. "I feared no law excepting the God of my ancestors" is hers; "I feared nothing" is not.
  3. The other side was not a villain. Whichever voice you choose, somewhere in your piece that person meets — or thinks about — someone who chose the opposite. Te Puea and Ngata became friends in 1927. Write as if that is possible.

Four voices to choose from · a perspective, not an opinion · evidence first, voice last.

Sources. Te Ara / Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: Michael King, Hērangi, Te Kirihaehae Te Puea (1996, written with Te Arikinui Te Ātairangikaahu and others); M. P. K. Sorrenson, Ngata, Apirana Turupa (1996). NZHistory (Ministry for Culture and Heritage): Māori objection to conscription. Quoted phrases are verbatim; where a line is a source's summary rather than the person's words, it says so. Two leaders, opposite answers, not enemies — whichever voice you choose, the other one was not a villain.