A cemetery search, a toddler, and a family tree that is far from simple.<\/p>\n
There we are, trodding through the long, yellowing grass of the Roman Catholic Division at Waikumete Cemetery in west Auckland. My toddler son is chasing his dog through the rows of crumbling headstones, while his mother and I desperately search for plot number 49 of the second row.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet off there,\u201d I yell at my dog as he runs towards a grave covered in weeds and missing a headstone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I felt a bit uneasy about bringing him into the cemetery \u2013 it\u2019s certainly not common practice for our urup\u0101 back home \u2013 but this isn\u2019t one of those kinds of urup\u0101. Besides, the dog needed a walk and because we had the exact plot number we were looking for, I thought we mightn\u2019t be here too long. Also, there was a sign at the entry saying: \u201cKeep your dogs on leash,\u201d so I figured they were welcome here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After searching back and forth between the two rows closest to the road for around half an hour in the warm afternoon sun, I tell my fianc\u00e9e to forget about it and that we\u2019ll come back another time. It\u2019s too hot, I\u2019m too full, our toddler is tired, and there\u2019s pavlova to be eaten at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a shame the Catholics haven\u2019t maintained their graves as well as the Jews next door, eh?\u201d I cheekily remark to my fianc\u00e9e as I start the car.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Patrick James Doolan and Margaret Clifford Doolan are the people we were searching for. They\u2019re my fourth great-grandparents on my mother\u2019s side, and likely a large reason she felt comfortable giving me a strong Irish name like Liam. They were both born in Ireland in the early 19th century, were married in Quebec, and eventually migrated to New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Three generations later, my mother Natalie Mary Shaw was born. She would go on to meet my M\u0101ori father, and eventually I was born. The son of a third-generation New Zealand European woman and a staunch M\u0101ori man with only a speck of non-M\u0101ori blood in him. It made for an interesting upbringing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The author\u2019s parents Natalie Shaw and Joe R\u0101tana (Image: Liam R\u0101tana)<\/p>\n
Growing up, I had a strong affiliation with my M\u0101ori side. There are a few reasons for this, but mostly it was because after the passing of my mother when I was four years old, my dad became solely responsible for my care. He made sure I was connected to my turangawaewae and helped shape my identity as a young M\u0101ori male. Unfortunately, it also meant that I was disconnected from my P\u0101keh\u0101 whakapapa.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the last six months though, I\u2019ve been on a journey of discovery regarding my mother\u2019s side. A lot of my interest has come from the fact I now have a young child of my own. While I can trace our M\u0101ori lineage back dozens of generations, I have long had a massive gap of knowledge on the other side. That\u2019s now changing.<\/p>\n
With the skills I have gained from decades of research on my M\u0101ori genealogy, I have started to unravel more of my mother\u2019s whakapapa. It\u2019s made for some eye-opening discoveries, and a few mild moral dilemmas. One of the most interesting findings so far is that Patrick Doolan, the man whose grave we\u2019ve been searching for, was a member of the British army and served in the 65th Regiment here in New Zealand, which had the distinction of being the longest-serving British infantry regiment in New Zealand and played a key role in the invasion of the Waikato during the mid-19th-century Land Wars.<\/p>\n
It took me a while to come to terms with this discovery. On one side, I am a descendant of people who fought against the British and colonisation of Aotearoa, while on the other, I am descended from the very people they were battling. I know I am not alone, but I haven\u2019t really seen much discussion on how to deal with this dilemma.<\/p>\n
Since finding this out, I\u2019ve constantly been weighing up what it means and how I might come to terms with it. Do I need to apologise to Waikato-Tainui for the actions of my forefather? Should I care for his grave in the same way I have for my M\u0101ori t\u016bpuna? What should I tell my son about his fifth great-grandfather? How might he have felt about the fact he has grandchildren with M\u0101ori ancestry? I still haven\u2019t figured it out.<\/p>\n
Another interesting part of the journey has been discovering where some of my ancestors lived and are now buried. Jessie Evelyn Steven, Patrick Doolan\u2019s granddaughter and my second great grandmother, is buried at the M\u0101ngere Lawn Cemetery, just minutes from my home. I recently found her grave and decided it needed a clean and fresh lick of paint. It\u2019s incredible to know that she has been there all this time, yet I never knew until discovering it myself.<\/p>\n
The author\u2019s grandparents (second from left and far right), mother (fourth from left), and aunties. (Image: Liam R\u0101tana)<\/p>\n
Similarly, I\u2019ve found out I have a bunch of ancestors buried around Auckland and beyond. Another interesting fact I\u2019ve uncovered is that some of my ancestors were responsible for the settling of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, which is now part of the wider Cape Town area. One of them became a miner in the Northern Cape of South Africa. I\u2019ve got Scottish ancestors buried as far afield as Kimberley, South Africa. A couple of them came to Aotearoa aboard the SS M\u0101ori. In a way, it\u2019s another one of my waka, though it might take a while before it features in my pepeha.<\/p>\n
While I can\u2019t say for certain what my colonial ancestors would have thought about having descendants like me and my son, I like to think they would have loved us just as much as any other of their descendants.<\/p>\n
The journey of embracing my British ancestry is ongoing and something that is taking some reckoning. I\u2019m still trying to figure out how to accept the fact that I am the coloniser and the colonised and what it means about how I live my life. For now, I continue to walk in both worlds, attempting to accept who I am, and forgiving myself for stumbling along the way. It\u2019s sort of like just quickly wearing your shoes inside the house, or putting your kai on the passenger\u2019s seat while you drive. It\u2019s a collision of tikanga, worldviews, perspectives, and truths \u2013 neither of which are wrong or right, just different.<\/p>\n
I will be back at the cemetery again some time soon, searching for the Doolans, and planning on how to fix their graves, even if they were responsible for some pretty horrendous things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cemetery search, a toddler, and a family tree that is far from simple. There we are, trodding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26380,38390,492,19472,140372,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-237983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-atea","tag-colonisation","tag-comments-enabled","tag-genealogy","tag-mixed-ancestry","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}