An interesting and thoughtful interview , thank you. One of the many things it brought mind is the great proliferation of genealogical research on its close confederate, DNA-based research which began decades ago but is now an enormous worldwide obsession. I started about 15 years ago when i had to give up work for a few months due to il…
An interesting and thoughtful interview , thank you. One of the many things it brought mind is the great proliferation of genealogical research on its close confederate, DNA-based research which began decades ago but is now an enormous worldwide obsession. I started about 15 years ago when i had to give up work for a few months due to illness. It is amazing how much more embedded i feel in my 'tribal' identity which is coincidentally also white, but needn't have been. It is a kind of knowledge you can't unsee: your ethnic, historical, social place in the puzzle and for me provides a sense of security i never had previously. I think this modern phenomenon may be doing this same thing for millions of displaced people. BTW relatives by marriage from Northern Sweden already had an extensive family tree on the wall long before Ancestry.com. Their tribal links were still intact.
That's something some Europeans don't understand when they deride us colonials (Australian in my case) for expressing an affinity for one of our genealogical constituent countries/societies. The sense of profound belonging I feel walking around any small village in Donegal was amazing - everyone looked like an aunt, uncle or cousin of mine and I realized I'd been carrying a self imposed sense of 'otherness' everywhere else in the world no matter how welcoming the locals were.
I spent the last 20 years with a man from Belfast whose DNA showed up as 92% Irish and just a sprinkling of Scots blood. Mine was more varied, but showed large components of English and Welsh. The strange part to me was that i had felt a strong sense of belonging in the Stratford area which decades later has proved to be the area where my family had lived for many centuries before dispersing to the Colonies as well (Canada) and for me, to Australia.
An interesting and thoughtful interview , thank you. One of the many things it brought mind is the great proliferation of genealogical research on its close confederate, DNA-based research which began decades ago but is now an enormous worldwide obsession. I started about 15 years ago when i had to give up work for a few months due to illness. It is amazing how much more embedded i feel in my 'tribal' identity which is coincidentally also white, but needn't have been. It is a kind of knowledge you can't unsee: your ethnic, historical, social place in the puzzle and for me provides a sense of security i never had previously. I think this modern phenomenon may be doing this same thing for millions of displaced people. BTW relatives by marriage from Northern Sweden already had an extensive family tree on the wall long before Ancestry.com. Their tribal links were still intact.
That's something some Europeans don't understand when they deride us colonials (Australian in my case) for expressing an affinity for one of our genealogical constituent countries/societies. The sense of profound belonging I feel walking around any small village in Donegal was amazing - everyone looked like an aunt, uncle or cousin of mine and I realized I'd been carrying a self imposed sense of 'otherness' everywhere else in the world no matter how welcoming the locals were.
I spent the last 20 years with a man from Belfast whose DNA showed up as 92% Irish and just a sprinkling of Scots blood. Mine was more varied, but showed large components of English and Welsh. The strange part to me was that i had felt a strong sense of belonging in the Stratford area which decades later has proved to be the area where my family had lived for many centuries before dispersing to the Colonies as well (Canada) and for me, to Australia.