Abstract
Sonya Gaches engages with bell hooks’ (Belonging: a culture of place. Routledge, 2009: 24) observation that home is a place of belonging. Returning to her geographic home, hooks felt “a sense of belonging that I never felt elsewhere, experiencing unbroken ties to the land, to homefolk, to our vernacular speech”. What matters isn’t her hills of Kentucky but her interconnectedness with these histories, the people, their struggles and their stories. Kentucky, it is argued here, is the thing that provides a sense of belonging giving it a feeling of home. The autoethnographic narrative in this chapter draws upon this thing-ness of home connecting children to their histories, their people, their stories, to where they feel they belong.
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Notes
- 1.
I have chosen to privilege to local, indigenous name for my new country of residence alongside its Western name. Aotearoa is the name for the North Island and Te Waipounamu is the name of the South Island. As my new home is physically located in Te Waipounamu it is particularly important that it is included alongside the more usual Aotearoa New Zealand.
- 2.
While space here does not allow for a full description of Te Whāriki: He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa Early Childhood Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2017), it may be helpful for the reader to know that this document is a holistic curriculum framework prioritising mana enhancing perspectives of children’s learning. There are four underpinning principles which are the foundation for and are to guide all pedagogical decision making. These are Empowerment | Whakamana; Holistic Development | Kotahitanga; Family and Community | Whānau Tangata; Relationships | Ngā Hononga. There are then five strands which describe the environmental characteristics, pedagogies, and potential child learning outcomes that are deemed as conducive for fostering and enhancing related learning dispositions. These five strands are Wellbeing | Mana Atua; Belonging | Mana Whenua; Contribution | Mana Tangata; Communication | Mana Reo; Exploraton | Mana Aotūroa. It is important to note that the bilingual titles are not translations but rather are cultural concepts that are closely related to each other. For further information see Gunn & Nuttall, 2019 or https://tewhariki.tki.org.nz
- 3.
At the time of this writing, millions of Ukrainian children, women, and those unable to stay and fight are fleeing their homes. This is deservedly receiving a great deal of press and international attention. The images are devastatingly heart-breaking. Yet these children and their families are not alone. As the statistics provided attest, too many children have been forced from their homes, often with nothing more than the clothes they wear and perhaps what can fit in a small backpack. Yet the children have their narratives of their relationships still. I wonder what will help them hold onto these and new narratives to help them feel they belong, somewhere.
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Gaches, S. (2023). The Things of Home: Histories, People, Stories, Belonging. In: Gibbons, A., et al. Home in Early Childhood Care and Education. Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43695-6_8
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