New Zealand prepares for 250th anniversary of British-Maori contact

The 250th anniversary of the first encounters between New Zealand's indigenous Maori and the first British explorers to the country will be marked with a national commemoration, Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Maggie Barry said Monday.

The "First Encounters 250" series of events would commemorate the early meeting of Maori and Europeans during Captain James Cook's 1769 voyage to New Zealand, Barry said in a statement.

The government had committed 3.5 million NZ dollars (2.54 million U.S. dollars) to a commemorative voyage around New Zealand by a flotilla including a replica of Cook's ship, the Endeavor, Barry said.

The Endeavor replica would visit four of the main James Cook landing sites as well as other harbors from October to December 2019.

Jenny Shipley, New Zealand's first woman prime minister, who led the country from 1997 to 1999, would chair the National Coordinating Committee for First Encounters 250.

"It is a commemoration for all New Zealanders to own, a commemoration which will lead to a greater understanding of our unique heritage in the Pacific and who we are as New Zealanders," Shipley said in a statement.

"The flotilla will be a celebration of two epic voyaging traditions - Polynesian and European - and the historic foundations of our nation."

A national opening ceremony would be staged in the eastern North Island city of Gisborne in October 2019, to be followed by scientific conferences, cultural performances and exhibitions.

"This anniversary will be a spectacular three-month-long event which will provide impetus for tourism and create significant opportunities for regional economic development," said Shipley.

Further details of the commemoration would be announced later this year.

The event is likely to rekindle debate over the events that followed, including the British colonization of New Zealand, or Aotearoa as it is known in Maori, and decades of bloody war between the two races.

In October last year, Maori groups named Oct. 28 as a national day to commemorate the 19th Century wars fought against the Britain and its colonial settlers.

The British Crown signed a treaty with the Maori tribal chiefs in 1840, promising to respect the lands and rights of the indigenous people, but a series of battles in the ensuing years saw vast tracts of land confiscated and turned over to colonists.

Over the last two decades, successive governments have negotiated settlements of reparation with various tribal groups, but resentment has continued at the lack of recognition of what were once known as the "Maori Wars," but are now known as the "Land Wars" or the "New Zealand Wars."

Many Maoris still resent the fact that the wars are not part of the New Zealand school history curriculum and that there is no statutory commemoration day. Endit