New Zealand Land Wars commemorations fund panel meets

Māori Development Minister Te Ururoa Flavell is welcoming the inaugural meeting of an advisory panel to oversee a fund to commemorate Ngā Rā Maumahara – New Zealand Land Wars.

The five-member advisory panel met in Wellington on Monday to work on the guidelines for the $4 million fund which will support commemoration events across Aotearoa over the next four years.

The panel is chaired by Sir Wira Gardiner and includes iwi representatives Kāwhia Te Muraahi and Pita Tipene, Te Puni Kōkiri chief executive Michelle Hippolite and Ministry for Culture and Heritage chief executive Paul James.

“I am pleased to have a diverse range of skills, experience and mātauranga on the panel.  They all have an earnest desire to ensure our narratives and histories about our tupuna involvement in these wars are shared and understood, as they had, and still have, a significant impact,” says Mr Flavell.

The panel expects applications to the fund, which will support both the inaugural national event to be held in Te Taitokerau on October 28 and regional events, to open in late June.

“This is a game changer in the way our history is being presented and a representation of the changing relationship between the Crown and iwi. I expect there will be a great deal of interest in schools around the commemorations to mark the more than 2,750 lives lost in the New Zealand Land Wars,” says Mr Flavell.