Aloha: My family are both foreign. We moved over here when I was about six. I’ve never really – my mum’s Maori and my dad’s Austrian – but they’ve never really taught me much of history or of family. So I’ve never really had a connection to that. I find that belonging is something you build. I build it with the relationships I choose to foster and tend to belong to those groups. That’s what belonging is to me.
My Maori history hasn’t really been a grounding part of my life. Mum wants to start teaching me a bit more.
Patrick: My parents are Australian. We’ve moved around quite a lot. Dad was in the police. Brisbane is the seventh or eighth town or city that I’ve lived in. Belonging for me is definitely about those relationships and also groups and things you join to meet to people because moving around quite a bit I had to make friends all the time. The relationships with my family, my parents and two sisters, are very important because you know that’s always a back-up if you can’t find connection immediately. I spend a lot of time with my family because of that. For us, it’s definitely belonging with our family and also trying to build relationships in the community through sport or ‘uni’.
I don’t feel a great sense of belonging sometimes. Particularly here in Brisbane. I don’t feel settled.
Aroha: It’s too big to settle.
I met friends Aroha and Patrick and collected their stories at the State Library Queensland as part of the Anywhere Festival. Brisbane (May 2016)