Two Otorohanga College girls started a petition to have the New Zealand Wars commemorated, motivated by a story that at the Battle of Rangiaowhia women and children were locked in a church which was then burnt to the ground. A quick Google search, which it seems nobody bothered to do, shows this story to be demonstrably untrue.

A failure by teachers, Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy, and Prime Minister Bill English, who accepted this petition based on a falsehood, has provided iwi with $4m of taxpayer money to plan the commemorations

The unease is iwi will use this money for history revision and so to weave a new korowai of victimhood to improve their ideological interests and financial position.

The Government should be asked why the demanded Land Wars commemoration is only being discussed with and by iwi.

Of the about 3000 who died in these wars, some 1000 were British soldiers and militia. It seems their descendants are not being consulted. My forebears arrived in 1841 and some lost their lives in the Waikato and Taranaki wars. No one has approached me or my family.

If the wider public, and particularly the descendants of early settlers, are not involved and their views included then these so-called commemorations will, like Waitangi Day, become another day of ugliness and division.

R Prince, Welcome Bay.