The World Wars gave many Pākehā and Māori their first experience of living and working alongside each other.
But when Māori soldiers returned after their service they faced another battle, to be treated equally at home.
“That was probably the real nub of the grievance really is that they came back to be second class citizens in their own country,” says Te Mata Law lawyer David Stone, who represents several claimants in the Military Veterans Kaupapa Inquiry.
One being the late Nolan Raihania of the 28th Māori Battalion C company from the Gisborne area.
“He came back to a New Zealand that hadn't changed. He spoke extensively in his evidence to the WT about the racism that he felt the moment they got off the boat. And years and decades later when I interviewed him, he said if we had known what we would come back to we would've probably not have got on that boat,” says Stone.
As time went on, that feeling only got stronger for Raihania says David. “Because they questioned why they got on the boat when their kids filled the prisons, Kāinga Ora, WINZ and all sorts of stuff, they asked themselves, well why did we go fight for?”
More than 6,000 Māori served in the official Maori contingents in the two World Wars. But many more Maori actually took part with almost 16 thousand in the second world war alone.
For their service, they were promised better education, health and land to own. But the Crown didn't keep their end of the bargain.
Stone says. “The proof's in the pudding when you look at those communities and the vast majority if not all of it in those areas went to Pākehā, notwithstanding that Māori gifted their lands into those schemes for their sons, their sons upon their return got nothing.”
After the First World War over 10,000 Pākehā soldiers were assisted on land for farming, but only 39 Māori soldiers, just under 2% of all the Maori soldiers who went to war.
As for World War 2, only 2% of Māori soldiers were given land.
War Historian and Former Lieutenant Colonel for the NZ Army Glyn Harper says while Māori weren't supposed to be excluded, they definitely were.
“There was some resentment to offering māori good land, they had to deal with government departments, the didn't understand the process and if english isn't your first language dealing with bureaucracy is a nightmare,” says Harper
David Stone has already helped the families of more than 600 Maori soldiers receive the medals they never collected and looking at the farms Maori missed out on is the next step in the kaupapa.
Stone says, “we can't change what they never received but the one thing that we can control we have the ability to recognise and honor them appropriately in accordance with our tikanga on our marae. That is the one thing that's within our power and that's exactly what we are doing through this medals kaupapa.”
David Stone says Maori today don't expect to ever get compensated for the broken promises and the land they never received.. But recognition of the mistakes and an official apology would at least be a start.
