Ep 8 - Sir Robert Bom Gillies from the 28th Māori Battalion

Рет қаралды 8,651

Күн бұрын

A special one on one with to the last living solider of the 28th Māori Battalion Sir Robert 'Bom' Gillies. Moana Maniapoto heads to Rotorua to meet with the 97 year old.

Пікірлер: 27

@AsAboveSoBelow85 Ай бұрын

Thank you so much for this, I am happy I got to hear and see this man in my lifetime, Respect to this man and his memory.

@zninz5368 Ай бұрын

What a remarkable man, you’ve got to be the most handsome 96 year old and you still have your wits. Blessings ❤

@jcjc5856 2 жыл бұрын

A great interview with a wonderful man with some powerful messages. Congratulations to all involved.

@georgemiller1307 2 жыл бұрын

Sad how bad racism is in New Zealand...They went to war... Got nothing when they came back. 'War solves nothing, makes people rich'. 'Fighting for our own place in our own country'. Lowest rank but the strongest man to the rest.

@manchagojohnsonmanchago6367 Жыл бұрын

Maori soliders were able to go to university for free and could apply for grants to buy homes - and many did.. Think back (depends how old you are...) dont you recall your grandparents owned their own homes back then that they got after the war.. Yes some people didnt like maori people but there was no laws in place to target maori and the maori had more representation in new zealand than the average english man had in his own country.. Not that thats good.. That being said there definitely was some european new zealanders who had a deep dislike and hostile for maori.. But unlike the us with the blacks or natives or the english against the irish people- there was no law that allowed somebody to overtly target maori. It was more that some fancy hotels wouldnt give you a room or if you tried to book a wedding function they would declined for no reason ect or cases where people wouldnt approve of maori marrying their children ect.. Some people refused to employ maori in jobs without reason or if you had a bad employer hed not give you a premotion or give a european employee the premotion even if you were working well. None of that was good but it was never sanctioned by the majority of the society or in law, But even in the 1920s and 1930s there was maori teachers, doctors, politicians, principals ect they were not forced out of the society with violence or law. It is unpleasant but not as people portray it now. People in new zealand now dont have a strong reference to these times anymore and so people reference far more cruel extreme american racisim/slavery ect and think such a system was in place in new zealand when it never was. The bad thing about the maori in ww1 and ww2 was that maori volenteered in huge numbers (many served in nonmaori units) they also volunteered labour and also raised large amounts of cash, some tribes donated the equivalent of millions of dollars as well as donated clothing, food, materials and the use of their land in both wars, maori jumped into these wars willingly and put their effort into fighting a war that hardly concerned them and did an exceptional job doing so. I suppose they expected other new zealanders to instantky recognise them as friends and not foes afew the war.. But i suppose people dont change the way they think quickly. The old guy was probably hurt by it and i suppose rightfully so.. The maori put more energy into the war that the conscripted north americans or europeans to be honest. But what could have the new zealand government done to change people? Arrested hotel owners? Imprisoned your boss when he didnt give you a premotion? It was an underlying mindset that was the issue not the law it self. This old guy says he wouldnt fight again.. But i dont beleive him i think if there was a war tomorrow hed be clutching a rifle. The maori took to war and the army well and performed finely.

@tutaneka 2 ай бұрын

@@manchagojohnsonmanchago6367 Many of us would dispute what you say about the treatment of Maori before & after the war, I know it, because I've seen it with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears & felt the discrimination based on who we are, but I don't have hatred of my fair skinned brothers & sisters, it's not their fault that they don't know what it's like to be on the other side.

@manchagojohnsonmanchago6367 2 ай бұрын

@@tutaneka hmm well you could dispute anything but legally there was no discrimination in new zealand.. People can act contrary to the law but in a legal basis it wasnt enforced, unlike most places. A simple example is maltreatment of lets say irish people who are physically indistinguishable from english or scottish was in many parts of the UK enforced aggressively by law as if the irish were of some sort of inferior race. Or breton or basque ect children beaten and humiliated Legally in schools and society, paraded like clowns in paper hats, fired from jobs ect for speaking their own languages in public. These are less henious examples of what was generally normal in the world at the time- done in the two most "civilised" countries in the world, At the time. There other european "civilised" countries were far more vicious to their "nuisance" populations.. The scandinavians sterilised the saami and imprisoned them to get their land.. Well the germans 😏 ah well... Spanish wholesale imprisoned people for minor crimes like "publishing books" in subversive language and executed those who persisted, they settled nonbasque people on basque lands dispossed the native basques of their culture and made their ethnicity by proxi illegal in this period. The usa is a great example with their indians.. They even went as far as to deport east coast indians to mexico thousands of kms away from their land! .insane. These were the "nicer" places. Less civilised countries outright just used rape, murder and destruction of people in that time to get rid of any group they were bothered by... It was normal and state endorsed.. Japan, turkey, iran, ethiopia, argentina, Afghanistan, china, mexico ect ect are good examples. By comparison in new zealand such a system or culture never exsisted, nobody beat somebody for speaking maori or publicly humiliated them with government assistance or expelled you from your house or beat you in the street for being a maori ect. maori had all the same legal rights as europeans and some additional rights europeans were never granted in new zealand. I dont deny some people in new zealand dislked maori and probably in an unserhand malicious way would have conspired against them.. Im sure nasty tricks were used to get land cheaply or to deny things maori were entitled to buy subverting them. Im sure some people would have said and done nasty and even illegal things and got away with it due to some sympathetic official with their same ideas. But there was no laws in place to enforce this and no mechanism to block maori from legally resisting this.. As i said maori did very well in new zealand considering other nations attitudes at the time. Im sure some european new zealanders acted arrogantly and poorly but they never had the power to enforce this on every maori or even get the bulk of the european population to act the same way. Maoris disproportionately volunteered for WW1 and WW2 and donated large amoubts of money which i would think they expected to be recognised by the rest of new zealands population.. And ill be honest the government officially did but its quite true at a social level many who just dislike the presence of maori in new zealand were probably quite actively subverting positive things in a nasty way. But its many small nasty petty things.. Not a gun the head and a beating or a death march to a shallow grave. As i understand it it was more or less nasty petty stuff by individuals... Like a child inviting other kids in the class to a birthday except the maori kids or not taking reservations in hotels or halls for a maori wedding or party, voting against spending for something that mostly maori will use, not giving a maori a promotion in a job out of spite, the teacher ignoring the maori kids or punishing them more for the same things in class.. Kids in school not inviting the maori kids to play.. Ect ect.. Its not nice.. But none of it was illegal.. It does live to harmful things though.. For example if everybody acts that way the laws mean nothing and things that are highly malicious can be applied contrary to what the law says. A good example of this was in some regions ilof new zealand in those periods mapri who were mostly farmers were encouraged to sell their land and move to the city as their land plots were not very profitable in the depression. European farmers by comparison were not induced to do this and as farmers votes were counted at a higher rate thsn urban votes at the tine maori lost much of their voting power and sold up tgeir farms cheaply to live in the city working manual factory and construction jobs. Im sure people adviding to sell were the ones buying the land and they were probably the local politicians too.. In the 20s and 30s many areas of new zealand had majority regions of maori engsuged in farming.. In new zealand today id guess there is one or two isolated places where maori are the majority of farmers.. From and agricultural rural people to an urban people in one generation. A bad move. On thing maori like to blame to government and europeans for was the dissapearnce of their language which i have to say is the maoris fault as thry stopped using it themselves due to radio, music and culture. Even in areas with only maori in the 1930s the young people spoke english when their parents spoke maori because english was more "fun" people didnt bother to attend maori schools or read papers in maori or listen to maori radio. Parents spoke maori.. Kids replied in english.. Europeans didnt do this. But also the europeans mostly scoffed at the maoris language and hardly were interested in it which doesn't help but again its not a crine either. Anyway nmy point is not to say people were not nasty to the maori people individually but that when considred in the context of the time the maori were more advantaged that the bulk of other popke in the world..

@robertwoodroffe123 2 ай бұрын

My dad was ! Disappointed in the government ! When he got back here ! Almost no recognition! Then he was only a corporal 😅 Dehydrated!!! Told had to go ? To Wellington for his medals 🎖 he only got them in apparently 2004’

@robertwoodroffe123 2 ай бұрын

@@manchagojohnsonmanchago6367 interesting 🧐

@fernleaf1915 6 ай бұрын

outstanding interview , thank goodness time, care and energy was deployed to record his story

@ora-in-aotearoa9747 2 жыл бұрын

This is a lesson for the future of people, Matua bom said it all, no support for our battalion, and still nothing, so never again will our people fight for Nz should they need men or women, we are 100x the numbers now and we will only fight for our people and our whenua, this gvnmt can fight their own war.

@NothingComparesCo247 9 ай бұрын

What a massive memory he can remember it all Names Dates Times doesnt even have to think about it very sharp. Remember his Words Maori Man "It Was All For Nothing All For Nothing We Come Back & Things Were Much The Same For Us As Our Forefathers"

@khzn9309 9 ай бұрын

this interview shows what the Crown Nz Govt stand 4 what a bloody Disgrace....all of Aotearoa New Zealand Honor those who fought and Died in those trenches fighting 4 our freedom ArohaWairua Matua 4 sharing Ur painful Memories WE SALUTE YOU 🌹🌿🥀

@robertwoodroffe123 2 ай бұрын

Trench’s !??? Sangie