Many of us know where we came from and can tell the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation as family favourites.
Some of us know where we came from but don’t have stories to tell.
And some do not know where we came from.
To most people, a sense of belonging is vitally important, perhaps even more important than we may realize.
To have a sense of history, of roots makes us feel like we’re really alive, connects us with those who have gone before us and lets us know that we are not alone.
Europeans can often trace their families back many centuries and there are a lot of ancestral homes that have pictures of spookily familiar looking ancestors on the walls.
In fact, whole villages and towns can be found that are named after a local family and there are many family gatherings or reunions that take place where distant relatives from the four corners of the world fly in and find their place in the family tree.
And some family names are carried through the generations with every first son being called Richard, for example.
Some women decide to keep their maiden name when they get married rather than taking their husband’s name or use a double -barreled name.
A lot of kids at school feel that they need to belong to one group or another and will often join a club or sports group to at least belong to something.
In Tribeworld there is not much of a sense of history but there is a sense of belonging. The different tribes that the kids join act as a substitute family of sorts and this is particularly true in the case of the Mall Rats.
There are also some old ties such as Amber and Dal who knew each other before the virus and Ebony, Trudy, Martin (Zoot), Bray, Jaffa (the Guardian) and Spike who were all at school together, with Martin and Bray being brothers.
Ned, Andy and Tally were siblings as were Alice and Ellie. And there were also the twins, Patsy and Paul. There was Jay and Ved. And who could forget the infamous sisters, Ebony, Java and Siva?
At least the friends and siblings had some kind of history together and could remind each other of life before the virus and of life in their individual family albums.
The rest of the kids in Tribeworld would have little else to share apart from the fact that they had all lost normality, their families and past lives. That is something that would unite the kids in the beginning, before greed and power took over.
Tribeworld inhabitants do not have surnames – or at least none that we know of – and the way for names or a sense of family to pass from mother to child is by using a similar name to that of the child’s parents or to someone important in the life of their parents. Brady and Bray for example pay homage to the original Bray.
At the end of Tribe series 5 we saw some of the Tribe gang heading off on a boat. It must have been really hard to get on that boat and to leave behind everything that had become home since the virus struck. All the memories, the possessions, history…
Another way that helps us feel as if we belong is the sharing of events – particularly events that have happened for years before us, giving us a sense of history and of celebrating something that has been passed down to us. Events like Christmas or Hanukkah, Guy Fawkes night, the 4th of July, Thanksgiving Day…many of us have special memories of these events from when we were younger and the warm and fuzzy feeling that these memories release are often associated with time spent with family and friends – a ‘belonging’.
We wonder what special events the people in Tribeworld will celebrate as the years pass by? And whether amongst all the chaos and struggles for survival if the different tribes will really feel as if they belong in this New World?