Post-colonialism has provided a useful mindset by which contemporary historians can challenge previously held notions of national history, or see better how the national narrative can be considered from a perspective other than that of a grand imperial story of nation building. This paper reveals how post-colonialism enriches, and can often provide, a more accurate, balanced and nuanced comprehension of the accepted version of past events. It specifically demonstrates how post-colonialism has also opened a window whereby the Māori's own story of the New Zealand Wars challenges the imperial version. The imperial vision, one which glorified and exaggerated British military prowess, had downplayed Māori strategic thinking and falsified the historic record. This is evident in the way in which the first of the New Zealand Wars, Heke's War or the Northern War of 1845-46, has usually been interpreted. In this case, and generally, post-colonialism can create a new collective understanding of the past, one that contributes to improving the race relations between different peoples and the lands they inhabit.

The eighteenth and nineteenth century European invasion of the Pacific led to many atrocities, but - as a separate 'internal' part of the progressive European conquest of Polynesia - none was more brutal or more devastating than the Maori invasion of the Chatham Islands and the subsequent slaughter of the unwarlike Moriori, the indigenous inhabitants of this small isolated island group. Curiously, and for far too long, has the so-called 'Moriori holocaust' been manipulated and incorporated into a founding legend that actually legitimises the subsequent British colonisation of New Zealand. It is a fabricated myth, and one that continues to influence modern race relations in that country.

Post-colonialism has provided the means by which contemporary historians can challenge the previously held notions of national history and folklore. Using the specific example of the Wairua Affray, an early violent confrontation between settlers and Maori in New Zealand, this paper demonstrates how post-colonialism enriches and provides a more accurate, balanced and nuanced comprehension of past events. The creation of a new collective understanding of the past contributes to improving race relations between different peoples and the lands they inhabit.