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New Zealand First leader Winston Peters is calling taihoa on pulling down colonial monuments.
Around the world the Black Lives Matter movement is inspiring people to pull down statues of historic figures connected to slavery colonization and oppression, including a statue in Hamilton of Captain John Hamilton, whose death in a charge at Gate Pā inspired settlers to rename Kirikiriroa after him.
Mr Peters says whether the statue is of Captain Cook or Te Rauparaha, they were men of their times.
"Our job is to understand history and be very much aware of it so we can learn from it but the idea you can wake up one day and have a new conscience which says 'nobody else understands the world like I do so I'm going to go down and tear the world down and tear institutions down' is so darn wrong and we've got to stand against it. It's the kind of behaviour you may see offshore but it doesn't belong in this country," he says.
Winston Peters says Māori have mixed heritage they should not disown, and they should also remember there were slaves in the pre-European Māori world.
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