my sheepish identity

Kassi Grace
Jul 24, 2017 · 3 min read

My contribution for the GLAM Blog Club theme this month of ‘identity.’

I’m going to start this blog by telling you something that a lot of people don’t know about me: I am from New Zealand. Why don’t many people know this? Well, I live, work, and study in Australia as I have done for the last 17 years, I have an Australian accent (for the most part), and I am an Australian citizen. For all intents and purposes, I am Australian. But as I start to think about the concept of identity, I have to go back to my birthplace and how this shapes me.

My family moved to Australia when I was seven, and my memories of back then are of a kid who was fiercely loyal to where she came from. I had a New Zealand flag that I would wrap around myself, I’d watch the rugby with my Dad, and I’d refuse to sing the Australian national anthem at school, miming the words if any teacher looked my way. As I got older, maintaining my identity as a New Zealander either became less important to me, or I was distracted by other things, as teenagers often are. New Zealand is where I was born, but it became a factoid on a birth certificate or a passport.

It was only a year or so ago after a particular interaction with someone that I was confronted with how far I’d drifted from where I’m from. I’d made a new friend also from New Zealand. I identified myself as also being a Kiwi, and she immediately started saying something to me in Maori. I was embarrassed and uncomfortable, and had to admit I had no idea what she’d just said to me. I can’t remember her exact response, but it was something like “I thought you said you were from New Zealand.”

In the absence of seeing my identity as where I was from, I instead started describing myself and my identity as the things I did, the things I liked, and what I was good at. I was (am) the girl who reads a lot, the writer, the feminist, the library technician, and maybe someday, the librarian. I’m not alone in falling into the trap of placing stock in seeing myself in how others see me. I need to stop doing that so much.

I couldn’t tell you anything about New Zealand. I don’t know anything of its history or culture, current affairs or politics. And as an information professional who watches people researching their own histories every day, this makes me sad. And it’s something I want to fix. I’ve heard nothing but good things about libraries and other cultural institutions in New Zealand, like this project Auckland Museum is doing with their Pacific communities or these events the National Library of New Zealand is doing around digital preservation. I don’t think I’ll be able to get there this year, but the National Digital Forum at Te Papa in Wellington is something I wish I could go to.

This is the start of me discovering my homeland and where I came from, and I’m curious and excited for where it takes me. And who knows, I’d love to possibly work in a New Zealand library in the future, discovering the identity of collections (as well as myself).

Kassi Grace

Written by

Library Technician, Heritage Collections

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