Richard Shaw talks to Suzy Ferguson on Nine to Noon about his book The Good Settler.
For the last five years Massey University academic Richard Shaw has been writing about the role his family, and the families of others, played in the colonisation of New Zealand.
For Shaw, that includes a great-great-grandfather who was part of the armed constabulary that invaded Parihaka in 1881.
Now he has completed a trilogy with The Good Settler: Essays from other people's lands. He says many New Zealanders now find themselves standing on what he calls ‘restless ground’, aware of their own ancestors’ role in confiscating land.
In these essays he explores how New Zealanders describe themselves and Aotearoa’s history.
Listen to the interview on RNZ here.
