It will be our second reunion but already there are many who won't be attending as it was just announced around April but many had already made travel plans with families a year ahead.
Last week, I was asked to be a guest speaker at a class at our neighbouring Wānanga (that I happen to be a student at) called Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi translated as the house of higher learning of Awanuiārangi.
The class was a Zoom class and there were about 20 adult students attending. My topic was on genealogy and indigenous research methods and I shared my story about my search over 30 years on my family tree.
In starting with only knowing the names of 1:16 of my great, great grandparents and now I know 10 of them. The pic on the left is a pic that I just recently found that was shared on a family reunion Facebook page. It's a pic of my great, great grandmother Asia Ah Siu who was married in an immigrant to Samoa from Shanghai, China named Shing Ah Siu.
It was really interesting because in joining the first Family Reunion, I was able to find out so much information about her and her husband and the homestead that they had in Samoa which is still standing and I hope to be able to visit the grave sites of my ancestors as well as the places of significance.
Interestingly enough, their eldest son was named Aialaisa George Ah Siu and he was the eldest of the children. His daughter was my grandmother and she was named after her grandmother Asia and my brother, George, was named after our great, grandfather, in his memory.
I'm quite looking forward to the Family Reunion, as I'm hoping to learn more about my ancestors and the lands they were guardians of and lived upon. I did stay in Matāutu, near Apia in 1989, with my grandmother and got to safe on our ancestral lands there at my great, grand uncle Paulo's house. He was my great-grandfather's brother and the last of his generation...
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