When Great Britain declared its entry into World War I respectively World War II, New Zealand decided, more or less immediately, to join forces with the ‘motherland’. In both wars, Māori soldiers enlisted as a separate, voluntary contingent: as the Pioneer Battalion in WWI and the Māori Battalion in WWII.
As there was no conscription for Māori men, the question arises why thousands of young men went to these “white man's wars” of their own accord. Sidestepping the obvious economical reasons for the moment, an investigation of the prevalent public discourse pertaining to both wars might shed light on this matter. On the one hand, it included an appealing to the image of the brave Māori warrior of old, which was by then not only firmly rooted in traditional Māori self-concepts but also in Pākeha notions of the indigenous population. On the other hand, hopes were raised among the enlisting men that by contributing to the war effort and fighting alongside their white countrymen they would in fact be fighting for their own people's citizenship, as famously envisaged by Sir Apirana Ngata.

Two relatively recent novels by Māori writers Patricia Grace (Tu, 2004) and Witi Ihimaera (The Uncle's Story, 2000) explore the life stories of Māori soldiers in these white man’s wars and trace their fights for personal and social freedom in a Pākeha defined environment, but also through their negotiation of traditional expectations and the prevalent ‘warrior image’