The seventh Māori Battalion War Medal Presentation ceremony will be held in Waitangi this weekend, after being postponed due to last summer’s extreme weather events.
The ceremony will return medals to the whānau of 75 Māori veterans from WWI, WWII and Korean Wars, including the first mana wahine Māori nurse medal for Mary Claudine Cairns’ descendants.
David Stone, a lawyer involved in sourcing the medals, says this shows the importance to remember Māori contributions across all military campaigns.
“Not just those Māori Battalion soldiers, but there was subsequent other theatres of war that our men and women participated in, and I think there’s some other veterans or other campaigns that didn’t receive the full acknowledgement that they should have. And I think that this kaupapa has ramifications for Māori and Crown relationships right across the board,” he says.
Stone says the next and final Māori Battalion War Medal Presentation will be held at Houngarea Marae in Pakipaki near Hastings, to end the kaupapa where it started.
