How much do you know about your family?

When I trained to be an ESOL teacher, one of the topics we covered was having a sense of home (a tricky thing for migrants to regain in a new country). Family plays an important role in our sense of home and identity - who we are and where we’ve come from - but when we were asked to name just one of our great-grandparents, not one person could do it.

This got me thinking about where my family had come from… I knew some of the names, but did I know anything about who those people really were, what mattered to them, what their achievements had been and why they’d come to New Zealand from far-off lands? Not a chance. Yet these people are the reason I’m here today, calling myself a New Zealander and living in this peaceful, prosperous country.

Try talking to your family about your heritage and ancestry, so that this knowledge won’t be lost. Plus, it’s fascinating stuff when you get into the stories of people’s lives. And if you want to get serious, you can even research your family history through one of the many New Zealand genealogy resources in libraries and online.