I recall that whilst I was in New Zealand in 1986, Waitangi day passed like the Good Friday Bank Holiday in Britain... a nice day off work if you could, but not really worth getting excited about... but I was in an exclusively white neighbourhood... and my sister wouldn't dream of going to any Maori event....

As she didn't work and her husband is a nurse, it just passed like any other bank holiday with family except there was a Maori event on the news that didn't involve them getting their heads kicked in by whites.

LTS