The story starts in Hawaiki - the mythical homeland in Māori customs. Genetically, the whakapapa of Māori tracks back to East Polynesia, where Polynesian ancestors begun their journey to navigate the Pacific ocean and discover new land. The Wairau Bar is known to be one of the first sites Polynesian voyagers arrived at in Aotearoa, and there are close physical, scientific and spiritual connections between the Wairau Bar and Hawaiki. Hawaiki can be interpreted in various ways, and together with the evidence of early Polynesian arrival in Wairau Bar, that raises a question for many Māori and social scientists: is Wairau Bar the Hawaiki of Māori in Aotearoa? And why did Polynesian navigators migrated from their homeland and created a new life in Aotearoa?

On June 17th 1843, the highly contentious Wairau Affray (formerly known as the Wairau Massacre or the Wairau Incident) took place by the Tuamarina river, and saw the death of 22 European settlers and between 4 to 9 Māori (numbers of Māori deaths are contested amongst various sources). It was the only Māori-Pākehā scirmish in Te Waipounamu, and the first major conflict between Māori and Pākehā after the Treaty of Waitangi - Te Tiriti o Waitangi, in the chain of conflicts that was the New Zealand Wars (1843 - 1872). The Wairau Affray represents a fractured relationship between Māori and Pākehā due to a breach of trust, and the negative implications of colonisation on Māori land ownership. But importantly, how the Wairau Affray was presented historically shines light on the ways colonisation and Eurocentrism affected our understanding of Māori-Pākehā relations and Aotearoa historical events, in the past and today.