The Good Settler is a collection of 15 essays. It is related to The Forgotten Coast and The Unsettled but isn't really like them. Rather than trawling through my family's historical backstory and trying to fit the bits and pieces together, in this book I take several steps back from the detail and try to make sense of all of the ways in which I see things differently these days, now that I've learned a few things I didn't know growing up. The book might have been called Pākehā Myths, I suppose, because it tackles some of the foundational narratives we Pākehā often draw on to explain ourselves to each other but which, up close and personal, reveal themselves to be full of holes. It turns out, for instance, that we are not now and never were one people: Hobson spoke in te reo Māori at Waitangi, did not utter the phrase 'We are now one people' and made no pledges to anyone. And we haven't always been one people on the playing field either: in 1928, 1949 and 1960 all-white All Black teams toured South Africa, leaving Māori and Pasifika players behind at the request of the South African Rugby Union. So these essays confront a few of our shibboleths and invite you to see them in a different light. So these essays - which you can order from Massey University Press - confront a few of our shibboleths and invite you to see them (and ourselves) in a different light.