My family history omits all mention of violence against Māori – I want to break the silence | Richard Shaw

It is a grim irony that my Irish family - paying to live on land colonised by the English - was involved in alienating Mori from their land

On the morning of the5 November 1881 my great-grandfather, Andrew Gilhooly, stood alongside 1,588 other men, waiting to commence the invasion of Parihaka p (settlement), home to the great pacifist leaders Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kkahi and their people. He would have participated in the weeks and months of destruction and despoliation - of people, property and cultivations - that followed.

Andrew remained at Parihaka - which is on the west coast of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand - as part of the Armed Constabulary's occupying force until late 1884. The occupation was not benign: on one occasion constables tore down 12 houses in retaliation for attempts by neighbouring Mori to bring goods into Parihaka (the attempt to feed starving people was dismissed by the Native Minister as being in every way objectionable").