As an introduction to our course, my class mates and I were asked to delve into the history of our own family's migration story by finding a family artifact that documents our cultural heritage. Being that my mother is a first generation immigrant from New Zealand, I knew I would be able to find relatively recent artifacts that would give context to my mother's story. However, considering I am the child of divorce, raised entirely by my American dad, I knew it wouldn't be easy to find--that is, until I realized there's such a thing as the internet and social media.

After hours of stalking my family members' Facebook profiles, I found several artifacts which helped me to further understand both my mother's migration story and her family's cultural heritage. Two of the artifacts I found were images of my mother's brother, Tipa. In the first of these images (see above), he's pictured performing a haka, which is a traditional war dance commonly performed by Mauri people in New Zealand. I am unsure of the exact date this photo was taken, but my estimate is that it was at least a decade-old. It's important to note that while the haka is a traditional Mauri dance, neither Tipa nor my mother are Mauri. For this very reason, seeing these images served not only as a reminder of my mom's cultural heritage, but also made me consider what role, if any, New Zealand's complex history of European colonization of the indigenous Mauri people played on my mother's family culture.