Hinemaia is one of two Victoria students with roots to the region selected for the three-month internship at the Memorial House attached to Tairāwhiti Museum.
“The internship has been great. The collection includes artefacts that show what happens behind the scenes during war, including everyone at home. We’ve gone through a lot of material that is very, very significant. I now know a lot more about those who went to battle and fought for our country,” Hinemaia said.
As a fluent te reo speaker, the internship also provided the third-year student with the opportunity to learn more about the Ngāti Porou dialect when she collated the translation files of oral histories by C Company veterans and their descendants.
Dr Monty Soutar, a trustee of both Tairāwhiti Museum and Nga Taonga a Nga Tama Toa Trust, has been supervising the students with Sarah Pohatu from the Trust. The preeminent Māori military historian, Dr Soutar says it’s been a blessing to have the students at the Memorial House.
“As they are mokopuna of C Company men, it’s important for the Trust to support descendants to undertake research work that benefits the Trust’s aims of sharing the Company’s contributions to the war effort.”
The C Company’s war effort is famous in the region. Like all companies of the Māori Battalion, it was organised along tribal lines. About 1,000 men from the region volunteered for the Company, representing six local iwi: Ngāi Tai, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata, Te Aitanga a Mahāki, and Ngāi Tāmanuhiri.
The internships are jointly funded by Nga Taonga a Nga Tama Toa Trust, which is the kaitiaki for the C Company Oral History and Memorabilia Collection, and Toihuarewa, the faculty responsible for Māori academic interests at Victoria.