Daily Post Rotorua 4/3/15

LEAVE PAST ALONE

The letter by Mr Waaka Vercoe ( Rotorua Daily Post, February 20) is perpetuating a misconception when he stated Te Arawa gave the land Rotorua city sits on.

IT WAS IN FACT BOUGHT OUTRIGHT BY THE GOVERNMENT FOR THE PRICE OF £9000 ACCORDING TO THE OLD NEWSPAPER CLIPPING (see below).

What Ngati Whakaue did donate very generously was that formally known as the Pukeroa domain and was given for recreational purposes, not for a hospital site as so often claimed.

In fact when a hospital was built on the site they protested strenuously as they wanted it kept tapu since it was a burial ground and pa site used when Ngapuhi attacked in their notorious and bloody raids during the Muskets Wars between 1820 and 1840.

It was sad to see Mr Vercoe using that silly tag “redneck”. It was not a racist attack on Te Arawa but criticism of an undemocratic grab for seats on the Rotorua council.

Democracy cannot be compromised even for a people whose generosity is not in dispute.

Local bodies cannot right the wrongs of the past, or we would all be at it.

That’s because there is not a race of people on earth who at some time in their history have not been conquered or wronged by another, so let’s get on and live with each other in the 21st century instead of harking back to past wrongs and leave them where they are; in the past.

It will do nobody any good to fiddle with democracy in the hopes of righting long-past wrongs, although in this case, a self-interested myth.

AJ M, Rotorua

■ Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2254, October 16, 1889, Page 2 PURCHASE OF ROTORUA TOWNSHIP. (per press association.) Auckland, October 15 The Government have concluded negotiations with the Natives at Rotorua for the purchase of that township, the price agreed upon being £9000. Mr Lewis, Under Secretary for Native Affairs, and a Bank of New Zealand official, accompanied by a constable, have left for Rotorua, taking the purchase money with them.

https://slbplone.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ashburton-guardian/1889/10/16/2