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The chair of the Waitangi National Trust says the new whare maumahara, Te Rau Aroha, is not a celebration of war but asks the question what should be left for the next generation.
The museum covering Māori service in all wars is within a grove of trees to the south of the Treaty House and the Whare Rūnanga.
Pita Tipene says Wednesday morning’s openings were emotional occasions, as people focused not so much on the machinery of war but on the images and stories of those who fought in them.
"People saw photographs, they remembered their uncles and grandfathers and they shared many a tear and through the mihi and karakia it brought everybody together of one heart and one mind that these are the sort of atrocities we don't want to put any generation through,' he says.
Pita Tipene says the call for a museum in the north first came from a reunion of surviving veterans from A Company more than 15 years ago, and he feels privileged to have been on the journey to make it happen.
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