Small stories of colonisation: An uncomfortable settler family history

New Zealand History

In this podcast, Professor Richard Shaw whose great-grandfather took part in the 1881 invasion of Parihaka pā and farmed land taken from Taranaki iwi, discusses the entanglement of the small histories of settler families with the large history of the colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand.

On the morning of 5 November 1881, an Irishman called Andrew Gilhooly formed up alongside other members of the Armed Constabulary at the entrance to Parihaka pā. He was there for the invasion, the occupation and — much later — for the farming of land taken from Taranaki iwi. But those events dropped out of the family stories handed down to Gilhooly’s descendants.

In this presentation, Richard Shaw, one of those descendants, explores the possible reasons for and purposes of this historical amnesia, and discusses the entanglement of the small histories of settler families with the large history of the colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand. He also discusses his book, The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation (MUP, 2024), which features stories shared by New Zealanders who are trying to figure out how to live well with their own pasts, their presents and their possible futures explores the layered histories embedded in three landscapes in the city.

Richard Shaw is a professor of politics at Massey University, where he teaches New Zealand politics and undertakes research on political advisers in the executive branch of government. His publications include The Edward Elgar Handbook on Ministerial and Political Advisers (2023) and Core Executives in a Comparative Context (with K. Koltveitt, 2022). His work has been published in journals such as Governance, Public Administration, Parliamentary Affairs, and Public Management Review. He is also the author of two books that address matters of memory and forgetting amongst settler families in Aotearoa New Zealand — The Forgotten Coast (2021) and The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation (2024) — both published by Massey University Press.

The talk was recorded live at the National Library of New Zealand on 1 May 2024, as part of the Public History Talks series, a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

Download a transcript of this talk (PDF)