Whakapapa, Tikanga, and Te Tiriti

Overview

This opening lesson establishes respectful protocols for the seven-lesson unit Māori Battalion Justice Legacy. Students explore whakapapa and tikanga as ways of understanding people, relationships, evidence, and responsibility, then use Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a framework for beginning historical inquiry into rights, partnership, protection, participation, and justice.

Learning intentions

• WALT establish respectful protocols for learning about Māori history.
• WALT describe how whakapapa and tikanga shape historical inquiry.
• WALT understand Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a framework for discussing relationships, rights, and justice.
• WALT formulate focused inquiry questions about the Māori Battalion and its legacy.

Success criteria

• I can contribute to agreed protocols for respectful historical discussion.
• I can explain how whakapapa connects people, places, events, and responsibilities.
• I can describe how tikanga may influence actions and responses in a historical context.
• I can write an inquiry question that is focused, open-ended, and connected to the Māori Battalion’s legacy.

Curriculum links

• History: demonstrate understanding of the significance of a historical context, using relevant historical evidence.
• History: demonstrate understanding of perspectives on a historical context, including how values, beliefs, motivations, and experiences shape viewpoints.
• History: engage with primary sources by identifying relevant evidence, strengths, and limitations.
• New Zealand Curriculum values and key competencies: respect, participation, relating to others, thinking, and managing self.

Lesson structure (60 minutes)

1. 0–7 min · Welcome and learning protocols. Teacher welcomes students, explains that this unit involves identity, military service, colonisation, racism, loss, and justice, and opens the opening question and unit overview: “Who gets to decide what is remembered as justice?” Students silently record an initial response, then share only what they are comfortable contributing.

2. 7–15 min · Establishing tikanga for inquiry. Teacher facilitates the creation of a short class agreement: listen without interruption, pronounce names and kupu carefully, avoid making assumptions, distinguish evidence from opinion, challenge ideas rather than people, and respect the right to pass. Teacher introduces tikanga as practices and principles that guide appropriate behaviour and relationships, not as a single fixed list. Students suggest one protocol and explain why it matters when studying the Māori Battalion and its legacy. Record the agreed protocol on the board and in the inquiry foundations worksheet.

3. 15–25 min · Whakapapa and historical thinking. Teacher uses the whakapapa and tikanga teaching slides to explain whakapapa as relationships and connections between people, places, events, and generations. Link this to historical inquiry: asking who is connected, whose responsibilities are involved, what has been maintained or disrupted, and how the past affects the present. Model a simple, non-personal example: an event connects a community, a place, whānau memories, public memorials, and later debates. Students complete a relationship web on the worksheet using the terms whakapapa, tuakiri, collective maumaharatanga, and impact.

4. 25–36 min · Te Tiriti as an inquiry framework. Teacher clarifies that Te Tiriti o Waitangi has Māori and English texts with important differences, and introduces the classroom framework of rights, partnership, protection, participation, and justice as questions for historical investigation. Use the Te Tiriti framework slides to pose: Who was included in decision-making? Whose rights and interests were protected? Who participated, and on what terms? What relationships were upheld or disrupted? Students work in pairs to match each framework idea with one possible question about Māori soldiers’ service, treatment, remembrance, or post-war experiences. Emphasise that students must later test ideas against evidence rather than assume an answer.

5. 36–50 min · Generate and refine inquiry questions. Teacher provides the question stem on the inquiry-question workshop slides: “To what extent did …?” or “How did … affect …?” and models improving a broad question such as “What was the Māori Battalion?” into a more focused question about experience, recognition, treatment, or legacy. Students independently write three possible questions on the worksheet, then share with a partner. Partners check whether each question is open-ended, historically researchable, specific enough for this unit, and connected to at least one Te Tiriti framework idea. Each student selects and improves one question.

6. 50–56 min · Share and plan forward. Teacher invites students to read selected questions, groups similar questions on the board, and explains that the next lessons will test these questions using varied primary sources, including written, visual, oral, and material evidence. Students identify one question they would most like the unit to answer and one source type that might help.

7. 56–60 min · Exit reflection. Teacher returns to the opening question using the plenary and exit prompt and asks students to complete the final section of the inquiry foundations worksheet: “One protocol I will uphold is …”, “One way whakapapa or tikanga may shape inquiry is …”, and “My strongest inquiry question is …”. Collect worksheets to identify misconceptions and questions for lesson 2.

Resources

• the Whakapapa, Tikanga, and Te Tiriti teaching deck
• the inquiry foundations worksheet
• Whiteboard and markers
• Projector or interactive display
• Sticky notes or small paper slips
• Relevant classroom pronunciation support for Māori names and kupu
• Teacher notes on the Māori Battalion and Te Tiriti o Waitangi

Assessment

• Listen for students’ explanations of how whakapapa and tikanga influence relationships, responsibilities, and historical interpretation.
• Review paired question refinements for focus, open-ended wording, historical researchability, and connection to rights, partnership, protection, participation, or justice.
• Use the completed worksheet as an exit check; note students needing support with key concepts or respectful discussion protocols.

Differentiation

• Provide sentence starters: “This matters because …”, “A relationship that may be affected is …”, and “How far did …?”
• Allow students to submit questions privately or orally if public sharing creates discomfort; do not require personal whakapapa.
• Pair students strategically and provide a word bank with plain-language definitions for whakapapa, tikanga, tuakiri, mana, legacy, and justice.
• Extend confident students by asking them to develop two questions that investigate different perspectives, such as Māori soldiers, whānau, government, or later commemorative groups, and predict what evidence each perspective might value.