"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.
