Urban Maori leader and former politician John Tamihere says the state wanted Maori to be "nice brown white men" during what became known as the second great migration of Maori.
Seven Sharp explained that before World War II, 90 per cent of Maori lived in rural tribal communities, but by the mid-1970s almost 80 per cent lived in cities. Labelled 'the second great migration', it gave birth to a new breed of 'urban Maori'.
The story of urban Maori has now been documented in a new book - The Second Great Migration - which looks a the ripple effects of social engineering by successive governments.
John Tamihere has written the foreword to the book by Bradford Haami.
One of 12 children, Mr Tamihere's parents moved to Auckland from the East Coast before he was born.
"Maori didn't migrate to the cities overnight by chance and by looking for great opportunities. That was part of the story, but there were assimilation integration prgrammes hatched by the state," he told Seven Sharp.
"And when Maori moved off their land they brought us to the cities and then sort of pepper potted us, because that was part of the assimilation - we were all to be nice brown white men."
'Pepper potting' was a government policy of scattering and integrating individual Maori families among Pakeha neighbours.
When urban Maori woman Ella Henry was six years old, her parents made a decision which would change the course of her life - moving from Ahipara to West Auckland.
"I realised after a while that I was in a completely new world. I'd gone from a place where the only white person I knew was the principal of the Native School, to being the only brown person in the school," Ms Henry said.
"And it was uncomfortable, you know being the only brown kid, being the one with the funny name, being different and feeling like an outsider in my own land is extraordinarily painful and stressful."
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