Treaty 2U exhibit controversial | Rotorua News | Local News in Rotorua

The Treaty of Waitangi is still a document of significance for Rotorua residents, if the steady stream of local people checking out a special Treaty roadshow in the city is any indication.

The Treaty 2U touring exhibition has been parked on the Village Green at the Rotorua Lakefront since Saturday and has attracted hundreds of people interested in finding out more about the nation's founding document.

Among those who visited the exhibition was Sean White, who brought his 5-year-old daughter Kalani along to see the replicas of the original nine Treaty documents. Also on show were other displays, videos, cartoons and animated graphics covering the events which led up to, and followed on from, the signing of the agreement on February 6, 1840.

"I'm really interested in the history of it and what it has got to offer. You hear about it in the news all the time and I wanted to get an understanding of what it was all about."

But not everyone was thrilled with the display. Former Rotorua businessman Ross Baker was part of a three-man group of protesters from the One New Zealand Foundation who are following the roadshow from town to town in a bid to expose the Treaty documents as fraudulent.

"What we are getting fed now [through the roadshow] does not tie up with how things were back then," he said.

New Zealand society needed to be based on a long-lost final draft of the Treaty which gave "equal rights to all the people of New Zealand", rather than the wording of the "propaganda" document claimed by the Government to be the real document, he said.