Waitangi Day is New Zealand's equivalent of the Fourth of July. It's the anniversary of the day in 1840 when over a hundred northern Maori chiefs signed a Treaty with the English Crown, represented by Captain William Hobson, at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands ceding sovereignty(!) to the Crown. Depending on your point of view, it was either a revolutionary approach to colonisation or a fraud perpetrated on the Maori by cynical Europeans looking for a cheap way to acquire the country.
There was one small problem with the Treaty: Under international law treaties can only be signed between sovereign states which the Maori most certainly were not. However, over the years that small fact was conveniently forgotten. Since then the Treaty has been passed into law by the New Zealand government, so the point is now moot.
The New Zealand Wars of 1845-1871 began over what was regarded as abrogation of the Treaty terms by the European settlers.
In point of fact, conquest rather than a treaty would have probably created fewer problems for us today, although the Treaty is still hailed as a great thing.
