As loath as I was to divulge the deepest darkest secrets of my soul, I couldn’t help admitting that my family was the most precious to me in the world.
I am blessed to be the eldest of nine children, five boys and four girls; John, Andrew, Will, Jill, Lucy, Peter, Rebecca and little Jack. I would do anything for them.
In high school, my Māori teacher taught us how to recite our mihi, whereby we might introduce ourselves on a marae by recounting our family lines and our ties to the lands from whence we came. Whakapapa, as I learned from Ms Macgregor, extends beyond biological ties, encompassing cultural, spiritual and environmental connections.
It is a dynamic entity, evolving through generations, transmitted via oral tradition, storytelling and genealogical charts.
For Māori, whakapapa serves as a tool for comprehending one’s position in the world, one’s connections to others, the environment and ancestors. It functions as a wellspring of strength, fostering identity, purpose and belonging while playing a vital role in preserving Māori cultural heritage and knowledge.
As Pākehā, I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) claim Aotearoa’s mountains, rivers, or ancestral lands as my own, but the exercise got me thinking about my own family origins.
I always knew that my father originated from Glasgow, Scotland. He told us too many tales of life in that sooty, snowy, brawling city for us to forget.
Dad’s mother, Carol Davidson, hailed from Hawick, nestled in the Scottish Borders along the River Teviot — a town steeped in fractious history and renowned for its textile heritage. His father, John Balchin, descended from a long line of Guilford Balchins, stretching back to 1558.
Grandpa’s family tree is full of delightfully weird and impressive characters, from Admiral of the White Sir John Balchen (1670–1744), who went down with his ship the HMS Victory in the English Channel, to the playwright, psychologist, author, and wife-swapper Nigel Balchin (1908–70).
On my mother’s side, I hail back to Devon, Aviemore and the Isle of Skye. Mum’s mum, Emily Jean Passmore, left the family farm in Barnstaple, Devon and travelled to New Zealand as a Ten Pound Pom, where she promptly impressed my future grandfather by winning first place at a county table-laying competition.
My maternal grandfather — John Ivan Balchin — whom I never met, could trace his lineage back to Inverness, via settlements in Sydney, Ballarat, Otama, Lyttelton and Gore.
I implore you to speak to your older relatives and friends. Many people delay this research until later in life, risking the loss of valuable stories and recollections as older generations pass away. I regret, from the bottom of my heart, not asking my father more about his childhood and wild teenage years.
I wish I could learn more about my paternal grandparents and great-grandparents. I wish I could listen to him tell me about the sun-soaked months he spent tramping across Europe, his restful visits to great-aunts in Oxfordshire, his misspent youth smoking cigarettes up the plum tree.
Exploring one’s heritage, celebrating traditions, and understanding one’s roots can be a profound and uplifting journey, while also enhancing one’s sense of self-worth and belonging. I cannot properly describe the joy, wonderment, hilarity and angst at discovering the plethora of my family’s stories; the pain of multiple child deaths, the guilt over my ancestor’s involvement in the Warrigal Creek Massacre and other atrocities committed against Indigenous Australians, the wonderment at the resilience shown by settlers, faced with debt, arid land and homesickness.
A study conducted by psychologists at Emory University involved 48 families answering 20 questions about their family history. The findings revealed that children who knew more about their families tended to have a stronger sense of control over their lives, higher self-esteem and a perception of more successful family functioning.
According to psychologists Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush, understanding family stories provided children with a sense of history, fostering a robust "intergenerational self" and connecting them to a centuries-long legacy, promoting resilience and strength, even at a young age.
Following my father’s first heart attack in 2021, I handed over a hideous sum to 23andMe, a direct-to-consumer genetic testing and biotechnology company that provides individuals with insights into their ancestry, health and traits based on their DNA. I swabbed my cheek, sent off my sample in the mail, and waited patiently to learn what hidden hereditary monsters lurked in my DNA.
I learned that I am genetically predisposed to age-related macular degeneration and hereditary thrombophilia. My father also carried the cursed genes for the latter condition; I have no doubt that his Factor V Leiden variant in the F5 gene and the Prothrombin G20210A variant in the F2 gene contributed to his untimely death.
The package I bought from 23andMe also provided me with a comprehensive breakdown of my genetic ancestry. In addition to the expected English and Scottish links, I also discovered that a great deal of my genetic ancestry derived from the Emerald Isle, and most surprisingly, I also had some Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.
Obviously, having geneticists as friends, I know the failures and foibles of 23andMe only too well. I am not setting great stock by my results.
But nonetheless my results have inspired me to take better care of my heart health, and I am also inclined to research my mother’s distant Jewish ancestry. I wonder what treasures I will discover.
I truly love how important whakapapa is to te ao Māori. I feel it is something we Pākehā and Tauiwi do not acknowledge enough. Whakapapa is a central and fundamental concept in Māori culture, representing the genealogy, lineage and interconnectedness of all living things. It is a concept we would all do well to embrace and explore to our own ends.
Of course, family, and especially family history is more than mere genetic data. I know from my own experience, and from talking to people such as my beautiful sister-in-law, who grew up in the foster system, that family is more than the blood shared between people.
It is a matter of love, care, home, cultural bonds, chosen families and close friendships. In addition to my biological family, I am so lucky to consider myself a part of many wider, multifaceted and beautiful families of many varied natures.
There is so much to be gained by researching one’s family and ancestral ties: compassion, understanding, tolerance and empathy.
Ernest Hemingway once said "Every man has two deaths — when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal."
I hope to tell the stories of my ancestors; I hope to keep their memories alive. I hope my father, and all those before him, will never be forgotten.
— Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has just started a new life in Edinburgh.
