Re: rewritten history for schools. The decolonisation of New Zealand has come to this. Will the voices and memoirs in the books such as Young Nicks Head and ‘James Cook's New World' be part of the new school curriculum? Will the Chinese who built roads and created the market gardens be consulted? Will Maori now apologise for decimating 65 per cent of fauna and for cannibalism between tribes and of settlers, which is part of their history.

Colonisation has provided the ability of travel, housing, education, health, communication, welfare, legislative authority and money to Maori who would now use these very gifts. Made under the auspices of a treaty rewritten in 1975 to affect, control and demonise those 86 per cent of New Zealanders of every other ethnicity who made this country the great little nation it is now aspiring to remain. Will the many taxpayer-funded Maori schools now close now that there is compulsory te reo history in all state schools? Abridged.

R E Stephens, Papamoa Beach.