Māori Battalion
Where can I find information about the Māori Battalion?
(Years 7-10)
Image: Massey and Ward inspecting Pioneer Maori Battalion Soldiers by Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga on DigitalNZ.
Entry last updated: 29/04/24
Introduction
Even though there was a Māori contingent in the First World War, the 28th Māori Battalion was only established in October 1939. Part of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, the battalion fought many battles during the Second World War such as the battles at Crete and North Africa.
General Websites
These New Zealand based websites are the best place to look for information on the Māori Battalion. They cover the formation, history, battles fought, Māori war heroes and other important aspects, including current news updates on this topic.
Launched in 2009 by the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage this site is a record of honour and information about the Māori Battalion's contribution to Aotearoa New Zealand in World War One and World War Two. The site has heaps of tabs for you to explore.
Story of the 28th details the history of the Battalion.
Battalion Roll has records of Māori soldiers who fought in both the World Wars.
Map follows the trail of the Battalion during WW2.
Photos/Video/Audio has lots of primary sources on this topic.
Tips: Websites that have .org or .net in the address can have good information, but you need to assess how reliable it is. Check the About this site on the website. It will tell you how and why this site was developed.
Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Te Ara is an excellent starting point for all questions about Aotearoa New Zealand. If we look down to the bottom of the page, we can see that the website belongs to the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, so the information is well-researched and reliable.
Scroll down the page to find Government and Nation, then go to War and Defence.
Next select Ngā pakanga ki tāwāhi – Māori and overseas wars.
This story covers Māori involvement in every overseas war, the formation of the 28th Māori Battalion and their service after 1945.
Use search words 'Māori Battalion' in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography to bring up biographies of soldiers of the Māori Battalion.
Tips: We like sites like this because they’re reliable. You can tell because of their web address – they have either .govt or .ac, meaning they are from government or educational organisations. They’re also New Zealand sites, so relevant for us.
Tips: Search words, or keywords, are the most important words in our question. Usually it’s better to leave out small words like ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘of’ and just choose the main ones, e.g 'Māori Battalion'. We can always change our keywords or add more if we need to.
NZ History is a great website for information about Aotearoa New Zealand. If we go all the way down the page we can see that the website belongs to the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, so the information is well-researched and reliable.
Use search words 'Māori Battalion' to find articles NZ (Māori) Pioneer Battalion returns from war about Māori in the First World War and the Māori Pioneer Battalion flag.
Explore the link NZ Victoria Cross winners to read about Second Lieutenant Moana-nui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu, 28th (Maori) Battalion, 2NZEF.
Located in Auckland, this war museum tells the war stories of New Zealand. It has excellent Māori and Pacific collections.
This site has a link to the Online Cenotaph, a digital source of records of soldiers who served New Zealand's in overseas wars.
You will find here information on decorated Māori war heroes such as Second Lieutenant Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu and Haane Manahi.
Tips: Websites that have .com or .co in the address can have good information, but you need to assess how reliable it is. Check the About us link on the website, if you can find one. That can tell you what the company’s mission and values are.
DigitalNZ is a search site that focuses on New Zealand history and brings together results from lots of different websites. It’s an easy way of searching online resources from New Zealand libraries, museums, universities and government sites all at once, and has lots of primary sources. The results are grouped by the type of information, like images, videos, newspapers, articles and research papers.
Search words such as 'Māori Battalion' will bring up images videos, newspapers and articles on this topic.
This website is a great source of primary sources.
Select the tab called More and then go to Articles for current news reports on the Battalion.
Tips: DigitalNZ has various search options for you to try out to make your searching more targeted and useful.
Managed by The Digital Media Trust, NZ On Screen has free to view videos and films on society, politics, culture and history of New Zealand .
Videos worth watching are Māori Battalion - March To Victory, the story of the Māori Battalion and Tama Tū about Six Māori Battalion soldiers camped in Italian ruins during WW2 .
Te Puni Kōkiri advises on Government-Māori relationships and on policies and legislation affecting Māori well being. This site has interesting stories and articles about the Māori Battalion.
Use keywords 'Māori Battalion' to find stories on the Māori Battalion and the Māori Battalion National Association.
Tips: Try using a variety of search words to find information on your topic.
This is a video-sharing website owned by Google. Even though it is American owned, it has lots of New Zealand videos uploaded that you can access for free.
The keywords 'Māori Battalion' or 'Māori war heroes' brings up video clips such as Who were those men in the Maori Battalion haka? and the TVNZ series War hero Haane Manahi of the Māori Battalion Waka Huia.
Tips: Sometimes on YouTube a video clip is preceded by an advertisement. You can either watch the advertisement or click on the option to 'skip the ad'.
Tips: YouTube also has an option to play similar videos lined up.
Books
There have been many books written about the Māori Battalion - check out your local public or school library to see what they have.
Some recommended titles are:
28 (Māori) Battalion by J. F. Cody, New Zealand. Department of Internal Affairs.
The story of the Maori Battalion : te mura o te ahiby Wira Gardiner.
Victory at Point 209 by Andrew. Burdan, Kawata. Teepa, New Zealand. Ministry of Education.
Ngā tama toa = The price of citizenship : C Company 28 (Māori) Battalion 1939-1945 by Monty. Soutar, Ngā Taonga ā Ngā Tama Toa Trust., New Zealand. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. History Group.
Awatere : a soldier's story by Arapeta Awatere, Hinemoa Ruataupare. Awatere.
SCIS no: 1908755
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