Academic supports Land Wars national day
Professor Paul Moon, a historian at Auckland University of Technology, has stated that the campaign to have a national
day commemorating the wars that raged across New Zealand of the nineteenth century is long overdue.
“We commemorate wars in other countries, monarchs from other countries, but turn a blind eye to monumental and
nation-forming events that took place in our own back yard,” he says
Students from Otorohanga College, have led the charge for a national day for New Zealanders to remember the wars of the
1800s, and Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta has also backed the campaign.
Professor Moon says that the wars fought in in the country in the nineteenth century were crucial to the country’s
development: “the Musket Wars, Heke’s campaign, and the Land Wards collectively may have involved the death of close to
30,000 people, and their effects still reverberate strongly in the present day. Much of New Zealand’s political and
social landscape was shaped by these conflicts.”
A march on Parliament supporting a commemorative day for the wars is planned for 8 December, where a petition will be
presented to MPs.
ENDS