Tōku tuakana hou: My new sister

Atakohu Middleton discovered a sister this year that she never knew she had — thanks to a gob of spittle and Ancestry.com.

 

‘I have a sister’

It’s January 10, 2025. I wake early, and as I lie in bed watching the sun’s first rays playing on the ceiling, all the thoughts and feelings of the day before flood my mind.

I open my mouth and say:

“I have a sister.”

Gosh, those words feel weird on my lips. They sound foreign to my ears, too.

I open my mouth again.

“I have an elder sister?”

Joy bubbles up in me.

“I. Have. A. Tuakana!”

I laugh out loud. It’s all thanks to a gob of spittle and Ancestry.com. They’ve given me Wendy, the sister I always wanted.

A very long disconnection

As a kid, I was envious of my two younger brothers, Keith and Brad. In the 1970s and ‘80s, when we were growing up, they spent a lot of time together (mostly playing Dungeons & Dragons, as I remember it) and elder blisters were on the outer. I wished I had a sister so that I, too, could enjoy that sibling closeness.

In my teens, my general nosiness about people led me to journalism, and then it was just a short hop to become the family historian. In 2017, I became curious about DNA testing. I sent off $150 to Ancestry.com, and in return, I got a small container and a prepaid envelope. I spat in the container and sent it back to Ancestry’s base in Ireland. There, the DNA, which contains the building blocks of life, was extracted, turned into data, and analysed against other samples in the Ancestry database — more than 25 million of them.

A month or so later, I logged into my Ancestry.com account, and there it was. My ethnic inheritance expressed as a percentage, and the names and results of the people who were related to me, both close and distant. I turned out to be exactly as I expected: Māori and English on my dad’s side, Irish on my mum’s. Among the close DNA matches were my first cousins, my nieces, and an aunt.

Some Māori would say that what I’ve done is dangerous. According to ethicists like Karaitiana Taiuru, Māori should never send their DNA to companies like Ancestry.com, because your DNA doesn’t belong to just you. It’s also that of your tūpuna, your children, your parents, your cousins, and those yet to come. We’re brought up to view whakapapa as tapu, and it’s certainly collective, so what gives an individual the right to send it away to a bunch of strangers?

Karaitiana Taiuru adds that mauri, the life force in all living things, also exists in your spit and is transferred to the numerical data that expresses your whakapapa. Here, he raises a number of issues around rangatiratanga and tapu. You may think that you’re the boss of your own body. But are you still in charge of your genome, that most fundamental part of you, when it goes overseas? Is the essence of your whakapapa safe with these companies? And if you are highly observant of tapu and noa, how do you feel about the samples of the living and dead sitting side by side?

Various commentators have also pointed out that data theft is rampant in the digital era, and that once your spit becomes data, it may be at risk. There are concerns worldwide that genetic data shared for family trees may be acquired by health insurance companies to deny cover, known as genetic discrimination.

We also know that certain people would love nothing more than to see the reintroduction of blood quantum to deny Māori identity, mana motuhake and equity. Let’s not forget that blood quantum as an assimilation tool was in force here as recently as 1975. Before then, you had to be 50 percent Māori to be eligible to vote on the Māori roll — otherwise, you had no option but to be on the general roll.

This attitude, of course, is contrary to the Māori understanding of identity. But this way of looking at identity has shaped (some) Pākehā attitudes since Māori-Pākehā intermarriage became common, which explains why some can’t let it go.

As the One New Zealand Foundation, a cousin to right-wing lobby group Hobson’s Pledge, has said: “The Maori race, through intermarriage of their ancestors’ own free will with other races, has reached a stage where it is unrealistic to give Maori special rights and privileges in an Act, over all other New Zealand Citizens”. I can’t see the special rights and privileges in Māori being sicker, poorer, and more highly incarcerated than the general population, but that’s a kaupapa for another day.

The arguments to exercise caution with DNA are valid, if a bit doom-laden. But there is another perspective that we need to consider, and that’s the power of DNA to reconnect those Māori who don’t know their whakapapa.

My tuakana, Wendy, didn’t know she had three more siblings, nor that she was Māori, until she was 62. And my brothers and I had no idea that we had a sister until we were in our 50s. That’s a very long disconnection for all of us. Auē!

‘No whea au? Where do I come from?’

In the 1950s and ‘60s, most young people were woefully ignorant about sex, with government policy and Christian social mores operating to keep them that way. While contraception was available in Aotearoa from 1961, it wasn’t provided to unmarried women. It seems that in the Pākehā world, children were a taonga only if they were born to married couples. A single, pregnant woman and her child were viewed as shameful.

Such women were “sent away” to give birth to avoid social embarrassment, after which the child was adopted out to complete strangers under the closed adoption policy in force at the time. Closed adoption means that contact between the birth parents, the child, and the adoptive family was forbidden, and very little information about the child’s background was passed on, if at all. Between 1955 and 1985, around 45,000 children were subject to closed adoptions.

We don’t know how many of these children were Māori, but researchers in this field suggest that many Māori babies born to Pākehā women were adopted by Pākehā families. These children were usually raised as Pākehā and grew up ignorant of their whakapapa. In recent years, some have shared their stories of the dislocation this has caused, and their experiences are painful to read.

The 2023 census gives us some idea of the potential impact of adoption on Māori. It records that there are now 978,246 people in Aotearoa who claim whakapapa Māori. Of this number, 15 percent know they are Māori but don’t know their iwi — that’s 146,000 people.

Census data can’t tell us why this large group of people don’t know their whakapapa. We don’t have large-scale qualitative research on this, and on top of that, identity construction is a complex process. However, some of the reasons researchers have identified include colonisation, racism, shame, and closed adoption.

Among that group of 146,000 people, there are, no doubt, a good number asking a question that is fundamental to Māori identity: “Nō whea au? Where do I come from?”

My sister was just one of them.

Wendy

Wendy was conceived in April 1962. My Māori father, Ron, was aged 23 and yet to meet the woman he would marry, my late mum. Wendy’s mother was 17 and presumably living at home with her parents in Gisborne. It appears to have been a one-night stand. Nine months later, when Wendy arrived, her birth certificate read “Father unknown”.

Dad died in 2002. I asked his younger sister and his second wife if they knew of a baby. Once they got over their surprise, they said no and suggested he probably didn’t know either.

Wendy extracted a name from her mother many years ago (not our father’s), after which she scoured electoral rolls to no avail. She now thinks that her mother didn’t know who the father was.

What we can say with some certainty is that in January 1963, when Wendy was born, she was one of 433 babies born to unwed 17-year-olds that year. In that same year, 2,843 children were formally adopted away from their parents, and of that number, 40 percent were under 12 months old.

Wendy was raised by her grandparents and initially believed that her birth mother was her sister. She was seven when a schoolmate taunted her with the singsong jeer: “You’re a-dopted! You’re a-dopted!” Puzzled, Wendy went straight to her “mother” to ask what that meant, and the truth emerged. After that, there was a great deal of discord in the household, and Wendy left at 17 to make her own way in the world.

In the end, it was Wendy’s eldest child, her son Tom, now 35, who connected us. In July 2023, he popped up in my Ancestry account as a half-nephew or first cousin on my dad’s side. Intriguing, I thought, and sent a message asking what our connection might be. Tom, who lives in Melbourne, was upfront. He wanted to know the identity of his maternal grandfather, but his mum wasn’t too keen to talk about it. He said that he felt conflicted talking to me without his mum’s knowledge.

Nothing happened for 18 months. Tom was busy building his career in Australia, and perhaps his desire not to upset his mum held him back. However, in October 2024, we finally had a long talk online. Tom was a kind, articulate, and honest young man who clearly adored his mum. But there was a gap in his understanding of himself.

Then Wendy herself accelerated things. Without telling Tom, she did her own test, which showed up in my account as a match just before Christmas 2024. I took a great deal of pleasure in telling Tom to call his mum straight away. Messages flew in all directions as we shared the information we knew.

However, Ancestry’s predictions on Wendy and me were wavering between half-sister and first cousin. Dad did have a half-brother, so we wondered if he was in the mix.

Between Christmas and New Year, my Tāmaki-based brother, Brad, and I had a video call with Wendy and Tom, who were at home in Gisborne for Christmas. Wendy was, unsurprisingly, occasionally overwhelmed. But Tom and her husband, Fraser, were taking good care of her, and the conversation flowed, helped by wine and cheese at both ends.

At one point, I said: “Although we’re not yet exactly sure where you sit, you are definitely a Middleton.”

Added Brad: “Welcome to the whānau!”

We needed to get to the bottom of the DNA, so Wendy engaged a professional analyst. On January 9 this year, we got the results. We were sisters.

I texted Wendy:

OMG! I have the sister I always wanted! You have a whole new family! So excited! How are you feeling?

Wendy replied:

Bittersweet, I guess. I always said that I didn’t want to actually meet my biological father, but now I know he is not alive, it’s sad I never will. But hey.

That night, we talked for a long time.

In the weeks that followed, through more online talks, texts and emails, I learned a lot about my new tuakana. She was open, articulate, and matter-of-fact about the difficulties in her childhood, and had built herself a good life. She had Tom and his younger sister Sam, who lives in London, with her first husband, who is Ngāti Awa. A keen actor, Wendy met her second husband, Fraser, in community theatre, and he played a major role in raising the kids.

After many years working as an emergency medical technician and anaesthetic technician, Wendy is now a St John emergency medical technician. She is close to her kids, connected to her community, and enjoying herself.

Wendy told me that she did the DNA test because she knew it was important to Tom. “I had got to 62 without knowing who my father was, so I could have died not knowing, really,” she said. “In all honesty, I didn’t think I would ever find out who my biological father was, and I had become okay with that.”

Finding out that she is Waikato, Wendy said, makes her feel “very honoured and proud. I’ve always felt close to te ao Māori as my children are both Ngāti Awa”.

I’m a reo speaker, so I was delighted to hear that she has learned basic te reo and uses it with her patients (“E mahana ana koe?”). And she has been involved with several kapa haka.

The first meeting

It’s February 2025, and I’ve known Wendy for eight weeks. Husband Andrew and I are driving to Auckland airport on a Friday afternoon to meet her for the first time. She has decided to come alone.

Although Wendy and I have talked often in those eight weeks, and I feel that friendship will come easily, I’m anxious. What if, for some reason, once we’re face-to-face, we just don’t gel?

When Wendy emerges into the noisy, busy terminal, the expression on her face is one of uncertainty and, I think, hope. I call out and step out of the crowd towards her. She heads towards me, and I feel the tears rising. We fall into each other’s arms, crying and hugging tight. In this moment, the noise of the airport fades to nothing. My sister is here.

During the weekend, there is much enjoyable eating, drinking, and talking with Andrew, my brother Brad and his partner Donna. My Sydney-based brother Keith video-calls. The conversation is good-natured. Questions are freely asked, without embarrassment.

We pore through Dad’s photo collection. There are lots of him with pretty young women, but none of them is Wendy’s mum. We laugh about Wendy’s physical similarities to our father and the boys: the square Middleton chin and a broad-shouldered, lean physique.

We tour some Auckland Dad sites. The boxy, 1930s Ōrākei state house he was living in when Wendy was born. The Devonport service station that he built and ran in the late 1960s. The maternity home, now a private home, where my brothers and I were born.

At one point during the weekend, when we are all floating around the house doing our own thing, Andrew nudges me. “Listen,” he says. In another part of the house, Wendy is singing.

On Sunday evening, as we drive Wendy to the airport for the return home, I feel like I have a new close friend, except she’s my sister. It is both strange and exhilarating, and surreal, all at once. I don’t want her to go.

Once back in Gisborne later that night, Wendy texts.

Home safe and sound. Thank you all for accepting a complete stranger into your home. I feel very peaceful x

I see it the next day and respond:

I woke up this morning and marvelled once again that I have a sister. Still can’t quite believe it! We had a fabulous weekend with you. I feel happy and deeply contented. Three MidKids are now four x

DNA testing has uncovered a taonga. I have a sister, and it still feels such a novelty to type that line, let alone say it. Wendy not only has a whole new whānau — siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles — she also has whakapapa Māori. We’re all at the beginning of a new adventure.

Whano! Whano! Haramai te toki!

Haumi ē, hui ē, tāiki ē.

This story was first written in te reo Māori and was a finalist in the Pikihuia Awards 2025. You can read it in Huia Short Stories 16. 

Dr Atakohu Middleton (Waikato, Pākehā) is a journalist whose lengthy career has included outlets as diverse as Radio Waatea, the Guardian (UK), the New Zealand Listener, the Sunday Star-Times, and the New Zealand Herald. She lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her book Kia Hiwa Rā!, on Māori journalism in Aotearoa, was published in 2024.

E-Tangata, 2025