Talofa, reader!
This week, my class and I were given a unique and creative challenge: we were given three distinct photos from different moments in history and asked to select one to talk about. After looking through the options, I found myself immediately drawn to a black-and-white image of Maori soldiers of the Pioneer Battalion performing a haka in an open field in France during the war. While the photo itself is a silent, frozen fragment of time, I wanted my writing to unlock the noise, the heat, and the profound emotion hidden within that frame.
I decided to employ a blended writing style, weaving together narrative storytelling with descriptive imagery. This approach allowed me to respect the historical gravity of the New Zealand Maori Pioneer Battalion, often called Te Hokowhitu-a-Tū, the 140 warriors of the war god, while using fiction to fill in the sensory gaps that history books sometimes overlook. This allowed me to build a fictionalised sequence of events that gave the soldiers a complete day of life. While the specific characters, their internal thoughts, are anchored in real wartime experiences. I wanted to show that their “rest day” was more than just an absence of work; it was a vital reclamation of their humanity. I wanted to capture the contrast between the mechanical, cold violence of the “big guns” and the warm, organic energy of the haka.
The haka is much more than a “war dance”; it is a vessel for storytelling, pride, and collective strength. In the context of a foreign war, it served as a way for these men to maintain their mana and connect with their ancestors.
By blending these two styles, I hoped to move beyond just describing a photo and instead invite the reader to stand in that circle of soldiers. My goal was to make them feel the vibration of the ground and witness a moment of pure, defiant joy, a reminder that even in the darkest chapters of history, culture remains a powerful tool for survival and identity.
Would you want that to happen in real life!?