Angene – one of a small group of Cook Islanders who served with New Zealanders on the Western Front alongside Private Isaac Solomona and T Kopunaiti – enlisted in Rarotonga and survived the war.
World War I had a profound effect on the Pacific Islands that still resonates today. It helped define how we Pacific Islanders viewed ourselves, and our relationship with the then British Empire, and New Zealand, its proxy in the region.
An estimated 500 Cook Islanders and a significant number of Niueans served in WWI. This is a massive number for a country which, at the last census, had a population of about 15,000. Most of them were in the Rarotongan Company, which served with the British in Sinai and Palestine as ammunition handlers.
It is essential to know this history if we are to understand who we are as people living in Aotearoa. From the legacy of the New Zealand occupation of German Samoa, and the subsequent inept administration in the post-war years — so appallingly inept that then Prime Minister Helen Clark apologised on behalf of New Zealand in 2002 — to the many who went, primarily from Cook Islands and Niue, but also other Pacific nations including Kiribati, Tonga, and Fiji.
I am also reminded of the words of Sir Apirana Ngata about the Māori contribution to the war efforts and how this was considered the price of citizenship. Certainly, this is something Cook Islands and Niue have paid.
So what does that mean in terms of our relationship with the Pacific realm countries? It cannot merely be a transactional relationship - it has to be a relationship that is both economically and environmentally beneficial for the home island countries.
Ka 'akama'ara 'ua rāi tātou iā rātou – we will remember them.
+ Teanau Tuiono is a Green list MP based in Palmerston North.