1When Lord Liverpool, the Governor of New Zealand announced from the steps of Parliament in Wellington on August 5, 1914 Britain’s declaration of war against Germany, there was no sign of doubt among the large crowd gathered that the former colony would enthusiastically support the campaign. Prime Minister William Massey had a few days before offered London a New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and announced to Parliament that he had ‘no fear of volunteers not being forthcoming.’1 New Zealand was the smallest and most recent of the British settler societies, with formal Dominion status granted only seven years before, and the overwhelming majority of its population in 1914 of just over a million people were of British origin, and regarded themselves as British subjects. The term ‘New Zealander’ had been used through the nineteenth century, the period of the colony’s European settlement, but referred specifically to the indigenous Maori, and a sense of distinct national identity for the dominant Pakeha or white European population was only beginning to emerge in the early twentieth century. While Massey was only initially correct in his confidence in volunteers – conscription was applied in 1916 – ultimately, around 100,000 New Zealanders served in the War in the New Zealand forces, over 16,000 of whom died. 2,200 of those who served were Maori, almost half of whom lost their lives.

2In New Zealand as in the other Dominions, popular experiences of the First World War, both at home and overseas have become retrospectively suffused with cultural and ideological meaning, and closely intertwined with the construction, articulation and deployment of national identity. In New Zealand, this has particularly been the case in the twenty-first century, and there has been extensive state support for commemoration of the War’s centenary, both from the conservative National Party government, and in the planning stages under the previous Labour government. This is part of course of a broader project to remember the War in Britain, France, Belgium and Australia, which itself intersects with expanding academic interest in the broader politics of historical memory. This political and scholarly nexus has been especially salient in Australia and New Zealand, where the Great War has been taken as a key transitional event in the emergence of a new and distinct nationhood. As Pierre Nora has argued, sites for memorialization emerge at times and places which are turning points, where there is a perceived or constructed break with the past.2 Historians and cultural critics have explored in many contexts the ways in which the commemoration of war reflects contemporary politics of national identity, demonstrating the construction of that identity on the domestic front, reflecting internal political debates and divisions, and projecting national identity abroad.3 For postcolonial New Zealand, commemoration of the Great War means positioning the country in terms of its contemporary national identity and aspirations, its relations with Britain and other former Dominions, particularly Australia, and its understanding of race relations, particularly the relationship between Maori and Pakeha. These are the contemporary political concerns addressed in commemoration. But the process also requires the framing and representation of New Zealand historically, as both the subaltern – the junior relation of imperial Britain, geographically distant but close in terms of kin – and the hegemon, a settler society exercising the colonial politics of domination over, and incorporation of, indigenous peoples.

3This double ideological project of official First World War commemoration is centrally expressed in the ways in which Maori participation in the War is represented and interpreted in official commemoration. As we shall see, parallels emerge between the debates and controversies over Maori participation in the War in 1914, and current political issues around race and indigeneity. There was considerable disagreement among Maori over whether they should participate in a European war, with some more separatist Iwi or tribes citing the recent appropriation of Maori land, and resisting their incorporation into a common civic project. Those who did support that project expressed claims for cultural recognition and autonomy in their insistence on a distinct Maori battalion. Internal debates over commitment to a patriotism shared with British New Zealanders, and controversy over Maori leadership are demonstrated in the different context of biculturalism today.

4As I show here, commemoration of the War today includes recognition of Maori service, while eliding internal division among Iwi about the significance of this for Maori commitment to a shared national project. It emphasizes the role of the distinct Maori battalion, while failing to refer to Pakeha ambivalence about Maori taking on a fighting role, and commanding their own troops. Finally, the state deploys Maori cultural practices in commemoration – as they were deployed when strategically useful by colonial New Zealand for nation-building during the War. However the state sponsorship of a range of commemorative activities organized by civil society groups – including some critical of the War – has allowed here for a different expression of what Thomas Laqueur has referred to as the democratization of memory.4 As the meanings and activities of remembrance are turned over to ordinary people, subordinated minorities tell their histories, and concealed narratives emerge. In the case of New Zealand and the War, those concealed narratives include the bitter controversy over participation amongst Maori, and the recognition of Maori leadership of the separate Contingent.

Maori troops in the First World War

5Despite the enthusiasm of the New Zealand colony for support of Britain when war was declared, there was no assumption that Maori would be joining Pakeha troops abroad. Relations between Maori and the settler society at the time were shaped not only by rapid and recent colonization, but also by the years of warfare between the Crown and some Iwi in the North Island, as well as earlier conflicts among Maori groups. Maori were formally British subjects, and enjoyed an unusual level of political rights in British colonies: they were granted the right to vote, and since 1868 they had been represented in separate assigned seats in the New Zealand Parliament. These had been established in part to prevent the majority Maori from dominating parliament, but electoral boundaries were also drawn in recognition of the military support provided by some Iwi to the Crown in the New Zealand Wars between the British settlers and other Maori, which took place sporadically between 1845 and 1872. Those Iwi who fought against the Crown sustained heavy losses of land. Under the New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 and later legislation, about 1 million hectares of land were confiscated by the Crown from Maori communities. Forty years after the end of those wars, Maori who had opposed the British protested the appropriation of their land, and the failure of the Crown to grant them the equal citizenship, to which they were entitled under the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. Maori who had supported the Crown tended to favour conciliation and accommodation with Pakeha society and political institutions. The Young Maori Party, a group of young, western-educated Maori leaders from these Iwi promoted Maori welfare and ‘advancement’, and integration into Pakeha society. Key members Apirana Ngata and Maui Pomare were MPs during the War, and led the drive to recruit Maori to serve.

6Upon the announcement of war, Iwi which had supported the Crown in the New Zealand Wars wrote to the Government offering to send a Maori force to fight. The offer was initially rejected; British imperial policy, formally supported by the New Zealand government, was that ‘no native race should be used in hostilities between European races.’5 Maori had been officially prevented from serving with British forces in the Boer War, although some joined up and served despite the prohibition. Similarly, unknown numbers of Maori signed up to fight with the general New Zealand and Australian forces in 1914.6 However a strong movement for a separate and distinct Maori force quickly emerged, led by the four Maori Members of Parliament, who argued that participation in the War would prove Maori worth and equality to Pakeha New Zealand. The Imperial authorities backed down on the issue of non-white troops when Indian and Algerian troops arrived in France to fight, and the New Zealand government accepted the offer to form a dedicated Native Contingent with some enthusiasm. The Maori had put up considerable resistance to the British during the New Zealand Wars, and were openly described in the press and in Parliament as a ‘martial race.’ As Mark Sheftall has commented: ‘It did not require a great stretch of the romantic imagination to envision the martial prowess of Maori native warriors and bush-savvy Pakeha amalgamated into an invincible fighting force of “natural” New Zealand soldiers.’7

7The Maori MPs formed a recruiting Committee and promoted the ‘Native Contingent’ as a means to ensure that Maori should serve together, in order to make their contribution visible, and also to demonstrate Maori leadership. But the insistence on a separate battalion led at least most directly by their own people raised particular challenges which would have an impact later: the necessary stream of new recruits required to supply it would be difficult to sustain, given the size of the Maori population, which was around 50,000 in 1914. Moreover, neither the ordinary recruits nor their junior officers had any military background, and the British senior officers who commanded them were completely unfamiliar with Maori language and culture. The response to the recruiting drive varied: Iwi which had opposed the Crown and suffered land losses refused to send men, while others sent large numbers of volunteers. The Native Contingent was formed numbering 500 men, and left the country in February 1915 for Egypt, where it formed part of the New Zealand Division of the Anzac force. It was formed as a ‘pioneer battalion’: which would provide skilled labour, mainly digging and engineering, but would not engage in active fighting. Apart from garrison duties, during their time in Egypt and Malta, Maori troops performed hakas and other ceremonies to audiences of officers – Christopher Pugsley reports that ‘it seemed to the contingent that they were a travelling show, ’ performing like a theatre company for entertainment, although not considered good enough to fight.8

8As a result, however, of the heavy losses sustained by the New Zealand forces since April on Gallipoli, the Maori Contingent was sent to the peninsula in July. There was clearly some concern amongst the military leadership about them: Major-General Godley, the British commander of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, wrote to the New Zealand Minister of Defence, James Allen, that he had arranged for ‘specially selected men in our New Zealand units to mix with [the Maori] and talk with them, and try and keep them in the right path.’9 The prevalent assumption that the Maori were ‘uncivilised’ underlies Godley’s joking comment to Allen: ‘I had a communication the other day asking for [the Maori Contingent’s] strength and if they required any special diet. I replied… that I hoped that during their stay here there would be sufficient Turks taken prisoner or killed to go round.’10

9In Gallipoli, the Maori Contingent was attached to the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, where members performed digging and building duties until the Sari Bair offensive which began on August 6. The battle for Chunuk Bair, part of the offensive, has become perhaps the most celebrated New Zealand engagement in the First World War – in part because it resulted in temporary success, rare on Gallipoli, and in part because it was the only fighting in which the Maori Contingent took part. As is often retold in histories and exhibitions on New Zealand’s War, Maori troops chanted the haka lines ‘Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora’ (‘We may die, we may die! We may live, we may live! ’) as they took the Turkish trenches. The attack was initially successful, but the site could not be held, and was lost a few days later by British troops who relieved the New Zealanders.

10The Maori Contingent suffered heavy losses as a result of Chunuk Bair and other battles in August 1915. As a result of deaths and injuries, only 134 members were left of the original 500 to be evacuated with all other allied troops from Gallipoli in December, 2015. As there was not a strong enough stream of reinforcements, Godley made the decision to split the Contingent among the four battalions of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade. As the casualties on Gallipoli accumulated, volunteering dropped amongst both Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand – resulting in the introduction of conscription in 1916. There was strong resistance at home amongst Maori in favour of the War, to the breaking up of the Maori Contingent and the dispersal of troops into other units with Pakeha. The Native Contingent Committee complained, pointing out that the Contingent had been envisaged as ‘a special force representing the Maori race.’11 They argued that the identity of the unit was not being preserved: ‘General Godley should be informed that on this matter the Maori people are absolutely determined and unanimous. We could not ourselves go before our people to ask for further men to reinforce a Maori contingent that does not exist, except as reinforcements to the N.Z. Infantry Brigades.’12 Godley maintained his position, however, and appears to have also been influenced by concerns about Maori leadership, discussed below. However the Maori were reunited in the Pioneer Battalion in 1916, comprising both Maori and Pakeha troops, which served on the Western Front until the end of the War, carrying out digging, building and engineering duties.

11Those leaders who had supported the formation of a separate Maori battalion concluded that it had been a success in its broader political aims. After the War, Peter Buck, a Maori MP and medical officer at Gallipoli, wrote: ‘All who have come through the Gallipoli Campaign, where pakeha and Maori have shared the fatigue, danger and incessant vigil of the trenches, side by side, recognize that the Maori is a better man than they gave him credit for, and have admitted him to full fellowship and equality.’13 Another Maori MP, Maui Pomare, wrote: ‘Our people’s voluntary service in the Great War gave a new and glorious tradition to the story of the Maori race. It gave the crowning touch to the sense of citizenship in the British commonwealth; it satisfied in the one fitting fashion the intense desire of the Maori to prove to the world that he was the equal of the pakeha in the fullest sense – physically, mentally and spiritually.’14

12But there was also conflict and division over the leadership of the Maori troops, which likely contributed to Godley’s decision to break up the Contingent, and assign its members to other New Zealand units. Although the Commander of the Contingent was Pakeha, there were 16 Maori officers in the Contingent itself, including two captains, who were both sent home after the August action for unsatisfactory conduct as commanders, with suggestions made of cowardice. Godley wrote to Allen of the Maori troops: ‘The officering of them by Maoris of the class sent is quite a failure – they have no respect for them and will not follow them, and these men have no authority over them.’15 The reasons behind these allegations were not made public at the time, and historians have not been able to locate documents that show just what the nature of the leadership problems were. There is nothing to substantiate the intimations of cowardice. Rather, accounts by soldiers who fought with the officers suggest that the problem lay in the lack of understanding by senior British officers of their junior Maori officers and troops, and a frustration with the cultural customs and practices of the Maori, and with their use of the Maori language. The Native Contingent Committee claimed in a letter to Defence Minister Allen: ‘… the O.C. [Herbert] did not understand his men, nor showed a disposition to understand them… .’16 Godley wrote privately that the Pakeha commander was finding difficulty with Maori officers, who ‘sometimes wilfully’ misinterpreted the orders that he issued.17 He blamed inter-tribal loyalties for the disputes and problems.

13The return of the officers was publicized in Maori language newspapers, and the Native Committee in Parliament expressed their concerns about the matter and the break-up of the Contingent to the Government. Defence Minister Allen warned Godley: ‘You will realise how the Maori race must feel the return of these officers. Maori Members of Parliament indicate it will not be possible to raise further contingents until the race can be satisfied that no injustice has been done.’18 Allegations were made that racial intolerance was behind the sending home of the Maori officers. As Soutar reports, Godley was most unenthusiastic about accepting back the returned Maori officers. He wrote to Allen that reconstituting the Maori unit would be a mistake, partly because of the lack of ‘exceptionally good and first class senior Pakeha Commanding Officers, ’ without which Maori troops would be ‘much handicapped.’19 The issue was never fully resolved, and the dismantling of the unit contributed to the decline in Maori recruitment, although this also occurred in the wider population. Conscription was introduced in 1916; Maori were at first exempted, but in 1917, conscription was extended to them, at the insistence of the Native Committee.

14The story of the Maori Contingent reflects contested ideas about indigenous independence, self-determination, and attitudes towards integration and citizenship that prevailed at the time of the Great War, and continue to characterize contemporary race relations in New Zealand. The fundamental conflict among Maori over whether they should fight for an Empire which, some argued, denied them equal citizenship in their own land turns on the meaning of self-determination that continues to underlie debates today over indigenous autonomy and participation in dominant political institutions. But the Native Committee’s insistence on a distinct Maori Contingent commanded by Maori reflects an emphasis on self-management and equal cultural status even within the dominant institutions, which continues to influence much of Maori politics under biculturalism, including the retention of the Maori seats and the role of the Maori Party. And finally, Maori ambivalence about Pakeha nationalist appropriation of their cultural practices continues to shape the practice of biculturalism in New Zealand. The War and the Gallipoli experience are often today claimed as the catalysts for the emergence of a new national identity for New Zealand, but to the extent to which this claim is true, that identity was marked by struggles over race and Empire that continue, as we shall see, to shape the War’s memorialisation.

The First World War and the emergence of a New Zealand national identity

15The claim that New Zealand’s national identity emerged out of the experience of fighting in the First World War, and particularly out of the failed campaign at Gallipoli is not new. While little was written about that experience in the inter-war period, in 1956, former Anzac soldier Ormond Burton wrote in what has become a much quoted statement: ‘Somewhere between the bloody ridge of Chunuk Bair in August 1915 and the black swamp in front of Passchendaele in October 1917, New Zealand quite definitely found individuality and nationality.’20 The current centenary commemoration of the War reiterates this theme, and the records of returned soldiers (many of whom had not been born in the Dominion)21 suggest that they themselves identified more clearly after the War as New Zealanders – in part no doubt because they were identified as such by British and other Allied troops abroad. However this feeling of national identity was not more broadly shared at the time.22 There was no flourishing of nationalism, or examination of the role of the War in national identity in literature, the arts or public discourse. A self-consciously national New Zealand literature, exploring the dialectic of local and imperial, was foreshadowed by Katherine Mansfield writing abroad in the early 1920s, but began to emerge in New Zealand itself only in the 1930s. Post-War New Zealand was a socially conservative nation, whose political leaders espoused the same pro-Imperialist positions that they had in 1914. The Gallipoli landing was commemorated – April 25 was declared a holiday from 1916, and was celebrated annually with a memorial service – but it was not attached to a story of national independence from Empire.

16Some books describing New Zealand’s experience in the First World War were published in the 1960s, but it was only in the 1980s that the contemporary focus on Gallipoli and its role in the emergence of the nation took hold. A key marker of this was Maurice Shadbolt’s play Once on Chunuk Bair, written and first performed in 1982, and restaged in several productions around the country in 2014 and 2015. The play describes a group of soldiers from the Wellington battalion, including one from the Maori Contingent, and their August 8 assault on Chunuk Bair, launched against a backdrop of the indifference and ignorance of senior British commanders, portraying it as ‘a moment of historical definition when a colonial country realised its postcolonial identity.’23 In claiming that the New Zealand forces had seized the historical moment, Shadbolt did so himself: New Zealand in 1984 elected a reformist Labour government that introduced substantial economic and political reforms, with the goal of promoting a modern and independent identity for the country. This accelerated a shift away from New Zealand’s ties with Britain and the US, and the development of an independent role for New Zealand in its region. In domestic terms, the government liberalized immigration, provided increased funding for arts and culture, and recognized the Maori political resurgence begun in the 1970s as central to a reconstructed New Zealand identity. Shadbolt’s dramatization of the doomed assault and his critique of Imperial leadership resonated in the political and cultural context of the mid-1980s, and established in New Zealand the relationship between Gallipoli and the emergence of an independent national identity. In the early 1990s, young New Zealanders now travelling abroad in large numbers for their ‘overseas experience’, began to visit Anzac Cove, particularly on Anzac Day, in company with young Australians, for a shared experience of national community.24 Political leaders made frequent reference to the relationship between Anzac and New Zealand national identity and values, particularly under the Prime Ministership of Helen Clark.25 Clark’s government announced the building for the centenary of the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington at a cost of NZ$120 million. Commenting on spending on this and other projects to commemorate the First World War, the succeeding National government’s Minister for Culture and Heritage, Maggie Barry, said the Great War was where New Zealand gained a sense of nationhood. ‘It’s where we started. As New Zealanders, we were fighting as one, and that set the tone for the nation we are and defines who we are.’26 It is worth noting that the official reiteration, and apparent popular subscription to the notion that its role in the First World War is a crucial milestone in New Zealand national history, does not mean that that role is well understood: A 2013 survey found that only 47 % of New Zealanders had a ‘basic understanding’ of the First World War, and only 17 % knew that more New Zealanders were killed on the Western Front than at Gallipoli.27

17This shift in the cultural and ideological significance of the War for New Zealand must be seen in the context of its role in Australia. There, as Pugsley has pointed out, Anzac had been readily adopted shortly after the War as a symbol of Australian nationalism because it reinforced an image of national identity already present there – the resourceful, strong and athletic bushman.28 While there was a decline in popular interest in the Anzac myth in the 1960s and 70s in Australia, this revived from the 1980s, in a new period of Australian nationalism. The revival was symbolized and reinforced by Peter Weir’s enormously popular 1981 film Gallipoli, in which, as in Shadbolt’s play of the same period, inept and ignorant British commanders were juxtaposed with ordinary but heroic and doomed Australian soldiers. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Ben Wellings observes, ‘Anzac’ had become the dominant expression of Australian nationalism.29 This has been impelled, Wellings argues, by a new drive to establish national identity in an era of globalization, in which narratives of belonging and community must be drawn upon to bind citizens to a more minimal state.30 Similar reasons have prompted a resurgence of nationalism in New Zealand. But globalization has also meant that international norms around commemoration of the War and its significance have emerged, as Britain, Commonwealth and European countries have cooperated to plan memorial ceremonies in Turkey, France and Belgium for the War’s centenary.

18Nevertheless, some points of differentiation between the New Zealand and Australian attitudes to the War and national identity persist, as is evident in Prime Minister Clark’s description of the experience at Gallipoli as ‘a defining stage in the evolution of New Zealand’, but only one important piece in the mosaic that makes up the picture the world sees when it thinks of New Zealand.’31 A key part of this mosaic is the distinctive role of Maori in New Zealand’s national identity; the main reason why Anzac Day has not become adopted as an unofficial ‘National Day’ in New Zealand is that Waitangi Day, February 6, the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 by representatives of the Crown and Iwi has also come, in recent years, to claim this role. In fact, the two historical episodes are consciously presented in the dominant national narrative as complementary: the two key principles interpreted from the Treaty – equal citizenship for Maori and Pakeha, and Maori sovereignty or control over their own affairs – are presented as the central rationale for the importance of the Maori Contingent. The story of Maori Contingent soldiers proving themselves in battle, and earning the respect of Pakeha officers and the public, despite its obvious inferences – noted by Maori opposing the War at the time – of subordination and racial inequality is deployed in contemporary commemoration to demonstrate racial harmony and egalitarianism, in an expression of ‘Treaty principles.’ Moreover, the push to form and preserve the Maori Contingent, and the concerns of Maori both abroad and at home about senior British leadership who did not appropriately respect Maori officers or culture reflect concerns central to race politics today about indigenous self-management and self-determination.

Commemoration and contemporary race politics

19As this suggests, commemoration of the Maori role in the First World War reflects the current political context of biculturalism. In the 1970s, in New Zealand as in other settler societies, indigenous people began to assert their collective identity and rights, and to demand self-determination. During the following decade, governments responded to Maori political claims by recognising the Treaty of Waitangi as a foundational document, which established the fundamental rights and status of Maori. A tribunal was established to rule on Maori land claims, and the policy of biculturalism was developed by the then Labour government, to acknowledge officially the equal status of Maori culture with that of the dominant Pakeha society. In 1987, Te Reo Maori was recognised as an official language in New Zealand, and in 1988, the government accepted a report recommending strategies to overcome institutional racism, and to incorporate recognition of Maori culture into institutional procedures and practices.32 Since then, all legislation has been interpreted in light of the principles of the Treaty. Moreover, Maori cultural practices have been incorporated into existing state institutions and processes. During the 1980s and 90s, biculturalism became accepted as a fundamental aspect of New Zealand’s self-conception, endorsed enthusiastically by liberal Pakeha. Indeed, the shift in Pakeha attitudes towards Maori was demonstrated in the slogan for the sesquicentenary of the Treaty in 1990: ‘Two peoples, one nation.’ Some Maori critics have however expressed reservations about biculturalism, which, they maintain, fixes Maori in the permanent role of junior partner to the Crown, and argue instead for the right to self-determination.33 This claim is grounded in Treaty interpretation, but also in the emerging global norm supporting indigenous autonomy and self-determination, reflected in the UNDeclaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the General Assembly in 2008, and endorsed by New Zealand in 2010.

20The strategy of cultural inclusiveness which is central to biculturalism has meant that Maori cultural performances, artefacts and productions are routinely promoted by public and private actors both within New Zealand and in the global market, as instantly identifiable markers for the country and its products.34 There has been some Maori criticism of the commercial appropriation of their cultural productions and performances, but there is also widespread and long-standing use of these by the State. This dates, in fact, to the colonial period: as with other settler societies, the construction of New Zealand national identity in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, as the colony moved towards independence, relied for its claims of distinction from Britain on the appropriation of aspects of traditional indigenous art, language and ritual.35 This is clearly evident in New Zealand displays at public international events such as World’s Fairs and Imperial Exhibitions, but it was also apparent in military ceremonies from the Boer War – at which time of course, non-white troops were not officially permitted to fight. A Maori Battle Cry was written for the New Zealand Contingent, and the Auckland War Memorial Museum displays a photograph of the Maori author of the verses, trooper John Walter Callaway, dressed in a ceremonial cloak and holding a mere, or ceremonial club. Maori dances and chants were similarly performed during the First World War for entertainment and to impress senior British commanders with the fighting spirit of the Maori troops. As we have seen, Maori complained at the time about the way in which they were used for entertainment, but were barred from combat.

21The ceremonial role of Maori cultural production in marking out a distinctive New Zealand identity is clearly apparent in the centenary commemorations of the War. Consistent with biculturalism, in official ceremonies, as in all public ceremonies in New Zealand, Maori language, song and prayer feature routinely in prominent roles. The 2016 Dawn Service on Anzac Day at Auckland’s War Memorial Museum, for example, began with a Maori Karakia: a haunting chanted prayer of welcome in Te Reo, greeting those present and recalling fallen soldiers. Biculturalism also influences which aspects of the War are emphasized in commemoration. At the National Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa in Wellington, the main First World War exhibition on show is ‘Gallipoli: the scale of our war’, which was developed in association with Weta Workshops, the special effects production company of New Zealand film-maker Peter Jackson. Jackson was the director of the highly successful film trilogies ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit, ’ both of which have been heavily deployed in advertising and promotion for New Zealand abroad. The exhibition features, as the name implies, larger than life replicas of ‘representative’ soldiers (and nurses), and text which is written (like the title of the exhibition) in a colloquial first-person, as if from the perspective of New Zealanders at the time – for example: ‘Gallipoli was New Zealand’s first campaign of World War 1. The Turks had sided with the Germans in the war, and we were itching to take them on. Apparently they wouldn’t be too much trouble… .’ At some points the text appears to speak from the position of the soldiers themselves, at others, from a broader ‘New Zealand’ perspective, thus disguising the distinction between an emergent national identification on the part of the troops and the colonial identity retained by those at home for decades to come, which we have discussed above.

22The choice of Gallipoli to represent New Zealand’s War experience reflects in part the dominance of this failed campaign in the public imagination, despite the greater casualties suffered during the much longer period of fighting on the Western Front. But it also provides an opportunity to celebrate a brief victory on the part of New Zealand soldiers, at Chunuk Bair, and the exploits of Maori in fighting roles during the battles of August 1915. The Te Papa exhibition includes mention of a few Maori soldiers who served with the general New Zealand forces, but the overwhelming focus is on the Maori Contingent, and the enthusiasm of its members for fighting. Among the large-scale figures shown are two members of the Maori machine gun unit that fought in this battle. The Exhibition also reports, although not, in this case, in the first-person: ‘This was the Maori Contingent’s first and only real action on Gallipoli, and even then they were divided up among the Mounted Rifles. Later, they’d become a vital force of engineers on the Western Front.’ The politics behind Maori service are alluded to briskly, although with an attempt at balance: ‘Some tribal leaders, however, discouraged their men from enlisting because their tribes had been so wronged by the British Crown barely 50 years before.’However there is no discussion of the particular political reasons behind the push by prominent Maori for a separate and dedicated unit. Peter Buck is quoted prominently arguing for ‘the Maori right to fight, ’ thus reproducing the assumption that that the right to fight meant the right to a separate Maori unit.

23The National War Memorial Museum in Wellington offers a similar presentation of the Maori role in the War, passing quickly over their resistance to participating, and emphasizing the Contingent’s fighting role at Chunuk Bair, in ‘Gallipoli: the New Zealand story in colour.’ The exhibits here are a series of colourized and digitally enhanced photographs taken mainly by the troops themselves. These contemporary and explicitly national exhibitions are dominated by a state-sponsored narrative that situates the War as the foundation for a common emergent New Zealand civic identity, in which Maori participate equally but distinctively. This is fundamental to New Zealand’s contemporary self-presentation and promotion, both at home and abroad, as a happily diverse society in which indigenous and settler cultures enjoy equal status. The civic nationalist narrative trumps the more complex nuances of the historical record, which call into question Maori commitment to that hegemonic nationalist project. The War Memorial Museum in Auckland, by contrast, offers more historical detail about Maori views on the War, and reports the words of one Iwi leader: ‘I will not agree to my children going to shed blood.’ Moreover, the permanent exhibition at the Auckland Memorial Museum situates the First World War in the context of other conflicts in which New Zealanders had participated, including the wars between Pakeha and Maori in the nineteenth century.

24Te Papa’s ‘Gallipoli’ exhibition is the official show-piece of First World War commemoration in New Zealand, costing NZ$8 million to develop and build, and projected to run for four years. But state funding has also gone to other projects, some of which represent explicitly critical views on the War. These have included the television drama ‘Field Punishment No. 1’ which told the story of conscientious objectors, and the exhibition ‘Disrupting the Narrative, ’ staged by the Wellington ‘Art not War’ collective, which explored the futility of war. However the only sustained public presentation of the ambivalence of Maori towards the War and the call to service, and the internal debate and controversy amongst Maori groups, has been in the play ‘All Our Sons, ’ written by New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera, which showed for a short season in Wellington in 2015, and toured the country in 2016. The play draws extensively on Maori ceremony and dance, and dramatizes through intra-family conflict the strong position against participation by some characters, as well as the enthusiasm among others, particularly the young, for joining up. While Ihimaera has referred to the play as contributing to the ‘little-known story of Maori participation in the War’, and as an opportunity for ‘bringing back the memories of the dead, ’36 the more critical message is clear in the rhetorical question demanded by one character: ‘Why should we seek equal citizenship in our own country?’ ‘All our Sons’ also presents the reluctance of the Imperial command to allow non-white servicemen to fight – but it does not, notably, address the complexities of Maori control over Maori troops, and tensions with Pakeha and British command.

25Unsurprisingly, given the very different trajectories of colonization in the two former Dominions, recognition of the role of Maori servicemen in the New Zealand forces, and particularly of the Maori Contingent, contrasts with the situation in Australia. There, as Frank Bongiorno has shown, participation in the First World War by Aboriginal people has only been recognized since the 1990s.37 In Australia, the belated recognition of Aboriginal involvement challenges the older and powerful myth of Gallipoli and Australian independence, resisting inclusion and co-option.38 In New Zealand, commemoration of the role of Maori and in particular the Maori Contingent reinforces a fundamental divide within indigenous communities: between those who favoured integration into the emergent civic nation on the one hand, although maintaining separate organization, and those who rejected their inscription into the nation absolutely. These internal conflicts over accommodation and self-determination have been erased from both the narrative of the War and New Zealand identity.

Conclusion

26The emphasis upon Gallipoli in First World War commemoration in New Zealand might be taken as evidence that here, as in Australia, Gallipoli has become constructed as the mythical ‘birthplace’ of nationality. In the case of New Zealand, unlike Australia, recognition of indigenous participation in the War and particularly of the role of the Maori Contingent reinforces the role of indigenous claims and race politics in that mythical story of national origin. Of course, as we have seen, that recognition in official commemoration minimizes the political complexities behind Maori participation, and elides the ways in which the politics of racial subordination shaped both the kind of service the Maori Contingent were permitted to perform, and the degree to which their demands for cultural respect were acknowledged by Pakeha and British authorities. While minority interpretations have emerged that challenge the state’s presentation of race politics and the War, these alternative voices are unlikely to shift a state narrative that so fundamentally ties racial harmony to national origin.