Waitangi anniversary a day of togetherness

Pat Spellman, a local Maori Moana Radio presenter, is excited about the number of events Tauranga city is putting on for Waitangi Day. Photo Ruth Keber

Waitangi Day should be a day of togetherness - not a day of angst and controversy.

This is the view of Bay Maori radio host Pat Spellman as the Bay and rest of New Zealand prepare to mark the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

There is a special dawn service at Hopukiore (Mount Drury) at 6.30am tomorrow, as well as a family festival and Blake Park and family day at Greerton Village School. (See details in guide below)

Mr Spellman said it was great so many sections of Tauranga were celebrating this year.

"Some would have you believe it is a day of angst and controversy but we have events all over the city from the dawn service at Mount Drury, the whanau festival at Blake Park, the biggest roots and reggae festival in New Zealand and so much more and it is all happening here," he told the Bay of Plenty Times.

"It seems it's going to be a day of togetherness in the Bay of Plenty. Tauranga champions positiveness on otherwise a grim day."

Mr Spellman said Tauranga could not ignore what still needed to be done but Tauranga had made a lot of progress.

"I don't know what it was like 100 years ago but now you can go to every suburb in Tauranga and celebrate one of our national days.

"Waitangi Day has evolved to the point where it is much more a holiday for pakeha than it is for Maori. If a pakeha family go and have a barbecue with friends and family and embrace that time, that is as much Waitangi Day and the essence of Waitangi Day as me and my whanau celebrating it on the marae, singing Maori songs," he said.

"It's about whanau, kai, feeling good and music regardless what language you speak or what colour your skin is."

Charlie Tawhiao, chairman of Te Runanga o Ngai Te Rangi Iwi Trust, said the value of Waitangi Day was that it encouraged restoration of relationships and honoured the alternate realities of pakeha and Maori life.

When he had taken the time to talk to a person about Waitangi Day, he would talk about the geopolitical relationship the treaty attempted to form, the doors it opened to all peoples being welcomed here in Aotearoa.

"The value it invested in what people held dear for the survival of their way of life," he said.

Tangata whenua representative Awanui Black said Waitangi Day brought focus to who New Zealanders were as a nation.

"The idea of who we are [as a nation] and it allows us to engage around that point."

But Mr Black said Tauranga needed to look at what the Treaty meant to people locally with parts of the document signed here in April and May 175 years ago.