Te Hau Kinga: The Mori Home Front during the Second World War

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Taking readers to the farms and factories, the marae and churches where Mori lived, worked and raised their families, Te Hau Kinga tells the story of the profound transformation in Mori life during the Second World War.

While the Mori Battalion fought overseas, the Mori War Effort Organisation and its tribal committees engaged Mori men and women throughout Aotearoa in the home guard, the womens auxiliary forces, and national agricultural and industrial production. Mori mobilisation was an exercise of rangatiratanga and it changed how Mori engaged with the state. And, as Mori men and women took up new roles, the war was to become a watershed event for Mori society that set the stage for post-war urbanisation.

From ammunition factories to kmara fields, from Te Puea Hrangi to Te Paipera Tapu, Te Hau Kinga provides the first substantial account of how hapori Mori were shaped by the wartime experience at home. It is a story of sacrifice and remarkable resilience among whnau, hap and iwi Mori.

Te Hau Kinga is published alongside its companion volume Raupanga: Ng Pito Krero o te Pakanga Tuarua n te Hau Kinga, edited by Angela Wanhalla and Lachy Paterson. Raupanga features thirty-five succinct, illustrated essays exploring the Mori home front, translated into te reo Mori by Lachy Paterson.

Reviews

The war caused revolutionary changes at all levels: it proved to be a stimulus for the Mori leadership at home as well as laying the basis for new developments in the following years. This book provides a lens for understanding the years both before and after the war.Dame Claudia Orange

The depth and detail presented here affords a greater understanding of the critical roles and significant contributions of Mori that previously have not been explained and accounted for, or have not been recorded in such detail. There is a great need to supply information on the Second World War from a Mori perspective, and this fills a void that has been wanting and waiting for rich and detailed contributions.Professor Tangiwai Rewi, Dean of Mori and Indigenous Studies, Te Whare Wnanga o Waikato University of Waikato

Sir Apirana Ngata spoke of Mori contribution to the war effort as the price of citizenship; it is a price which should not have had to be paid, and this book reminds us what a huge opportunity for Mori self-determination was destroyed by the power structure at wars end.Jim McAloon, Professor of History, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington

This is not simply a story of Mori during the war. Two themes stood out for me: first, the enormous cost carried by Mori during the war and its impact on communities, whenua and moana. Second, Mori sacrifice both in terms of human life and hardship are alongside stories of creative survival in the face of the long-term effects of colonisation. Te Hau Kinga will attract a general readership, both Pkeh and Mori, while contributing to scholarly arguments around indigenous responses to global war. Rowan Light, Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland

Author Bio

Sarah Christie was a postdoctoral fellow in the History Programme at tkou Whakaihu Waka, where she completed her doctorate on the social and cultural histories of women in the workforce in New Zealand. She is currently a researcher at the Ngi Tahu Archive, Christchurch.

Erica Newman (Ngpuhi) is a senior lecturer at Te Tumu: School of Mori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies at tkou Whakaihu Waka. She researches adoption, whngai, kinship and identity (internationally and nationally) with a focus on Indigenous perspectives, and has published on transracial adoption in New Zealand. Erica was awarded a Marsden Fund Fast-Start grant to explore the intergenerational impact of the 1955 Adoption Act and to journey with descendants of Mori adoptees who are searching for their trangawaewae.

Lachy Paterson is emeritus professor at Te Tumu, tkou Whakaihu Waka, where he taught te reo Mori and Mori history. He researches Mori history, especially relating to newspapers and other texts in Mori, and the relationship between Mori and the government in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century.

Angela Wanhalla (Ngi Tahu, Ngi Te Ruahikihiki, Pkeh) is a professor in the History Programme, tkou Whakaihu Waka. Her primary research area is Mori womens history. Her most recent book is Of Love and War: Pacific Brides of World War II (University of Nebraska Press, 2023).

Ross Webb has a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington and is a historian with an interest in organised labour and oral history. He is principal researcher analyst in the Research Team at the Waitangi Tribunal Unit, and is working on a book, In Defence of Living Standards: The Federation of Labour, Politics, and Economic Crisis, 19751987.