Having mulled over it for a month I find it necessary to reply to J.Sage's letter of October 2nd to correct some of his errors and ignorance of history.

J.Sage, Maori did not arrive in Aotearoa up to a thousand years ago. Seven to eight hundred years is the accepted time and it was not Aotearoa, as this name has never been used by Maori to signify the country. They accepted the name ‘nu Tirani‘ when signing the treaty.

'We Pakeha” are not the second indigenous culture. There can only be one indigenuity.

'Their arrogant arrival” is inappropriate as chiefs of northern tribes requested the king to send representatives to the country to establish order and counter threats of invasion by America and France.

The greater threat to the extinction of the race was caused by the Musket Wars when almost a third of their population were killed in a thousand internecine battles, Maori killing Maori, up until 1837.

The 'some criminal behaviour” seems minimal when compared to a violent culture of infanticide, total tribal slaughter and cannibalism that the new arrivals encountered.

J. Sage sounds like an enthusiastic new arrival or a person who, so conditioned by repetitive media reportage of Maori claims and an ethnically patronising government has developed ‘colonial guilt.'

Finally, as a 90-year-old War Pensioner, whose forebears arrived in 1842, I consider I am as much Tangata Whenua as any part-Maori and can claim New Zealand as my 'forever home,” though not for too much longer.

B Johnson, Omokoroa.