When the Family Story Leaves Things Out

Professor Richard Shaw, who teaches politics at Massey University, joined us on Monday night for a talk that was thoughtful, deeply personal, and quietly powerful. He arrived with a warning of sorts, telling us he would not be passing judgment on anyone or telling anybody what to think. What he wanted to do instead was tell us about his own family, and about something he had quietly missed for most of his life.

The story began with an old photograph that hung on his parents' wall in New Plymouth. It showed a rugby team in lace up boots and long shorts, and the big man holding the ball in the back row was his great grandfather. Richard had looked at that photo a thousand times over more than fifty years without ever really knowing what it meant. One day he turned it over and found three small notes written on the back. A team name, a tiny coastal place called Parihaka, and a date, 1881.

"That seems like quite a lot of stuff not to have known."

Here is the part that took years to understand. His great grandfather was one of more than a thousand armed men involved in the invasion of Parihaka, a peaceful settlement, on the 5th of November 1881. He helped build the roads that carried the troops and stayed through five years of occupation. Over time, his family went from Irish poverty to owning and controlling three farms. Yet none of this had ever been talked about. Richard grew up hearing plenty about cows, dogs, the church and small country shows, but nothing at all about the man who started it all, or about what had to happen for the family to get that land.

That gap is what really interested him. Why do families remember some things and quietly forget others? His point was gentle but clear. Forgetting can be comfortable, because it means we never have to sit with the harder parts of the story. In his own case, the family could keep telling a proud pioneer tale of hard work and decency, without mentioning that the land had once belonged to other people and had been taken from them.

"You don't have to feel guilty about it. Guilt is profoundly unhelpful."

Richard was careful to say this was not about blame or guilt. Raised a Roman Catholic, he joked that he knows more about guilt than most, and that guilt mostly just paralyses people. What he asked for was simpler. Not that anyone feel bad, and not that anyone be held responsible for things done long ago, but just that we learn the fuller story rather than the tidy version that leaves the difficult bits out.

He also reminded us that this is not ancient history with no effect on today. He gave real examples of Maori owned land that families still cannot easily reach or use, where people must cross a neighbour's farm and ask permission just to get onto their own block. The past, he said, follows you. It is right behind you every step of the way.

When asked whether it took courage to stand up as a Pakeha man and speak this way, he brushed it off. The real bravery, he said, belongs to the people who keep showing up to these conversations with patience and grace rather than anger. He left us with the thought that perhaps we do not all need to be "one people" in exactly the same mould. We can be many different things and still get along, and in time, he believes, we will get there.

Our thanks to Professor Richard Shaw for a memorable evening, and to everyone who joined the discussion afterwards. It gave us all plenty to think about.