Richard Shaw's books on his journey to understand colonisation

The Forgotten Coast began as personal writing by Richard Shaw after his father's death, exploring family stories tied to colonisation and land in coastal Taranaki. The book prompted public response and dialogue, leading Shaw to further research and subsequent books. It blends memoir, local history, and critical reflection on how settler families benefited from land confiscations. Shaw uses the book to connect intimate family narratives to larger national histories of dispossession and contested memory. The work contributed to a broader conversation in New Zealand about acknowledging and teaching the fuller history of colonisation.

Richard Shaw's The Good Settler collects essays that trace personal and national histories tied to colonisation, focusing on how settler families inherited land and narratives in Aotearoa. Drawing on Shaw's family history — including an ancestor involved in the 1881 Parihaka invasion — the book interrogates myths of equality and the settler story. Shaw situates personal recollection alongside wider historical examples of land confiscation, broken deals, and legal mechanisms that disadvantaged Māori. The essays aim to prompt readers, especially Pākehā, to confront uncomfortable truths about inheritance, identity, and the country's past. The book completes a trilogy that began with The Forgotten Coast and continues Shaw’s public engagement on historical remembrance and reckoning.