my homeland armenia essay

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Op-Ed Contributor

My Proud Pilgrimage to My Homeland

By Chris Bohjalian

• Dec. 6, 2016

The forward trenches in the hills just beyond the abandoned village of Talish, in Nagorno-Karabakh, are reminiscent of World War I: long, endless, slits in the ground, the dirt buttressed by wood, with periodic firing posts and dugouts. Stacked tires packed with dirt stand in for sandbags, but otherwise it looks like the Western Front 100 years ago. Behind the trenches, alongside the road, tanks are angled to counterattack.

On the first day of September, the sky cerulean, Capt. Gegham Grigoryan, 32, stood with me and pointed toward the northeast — toward Azerbaijan and the minefield and buffer zone less than a mile away.

“If you want peace, you should prepare for war,” he said, shrugging.

Earlier this year, Nagorno-Karabakh, his small, unrecognized Armenian republic, got war. Azerbaijan attacked across the eastern border in the small hours of April 2, breaking a cease-fire that had largely held since 1994. Here in Talish, the 400-person village was so badly shelled that today it has been abandoned and the residents resettled in other parts of the country.

Captain Grigoryan, a father of two girls, has a degree in international relations, but believes that Nagorno-Karabakh needs him in the military: “It is better for me to wear a uniform than a suit.”

Very few Americans could find Nagorno-Karabakh on a map. (Very few of us, of course, could find Armenia and Azerbaijan, either.) I went there this summer for the same reason that I return every year to Armenia and the remnants of Armenian civilization that are scattered across eastern Turkey: This earth is in my blood, and my visits are a pilgrimage. I am an Armenian-American, but only at midlife did I understand the draw of this ancient land for me.

The line of contact between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan is strategically significant; it is one of those hot spots that could destabilize the Caucasus. Armenia and Azerbaijan share a border with Iran. After Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno-Karabakh in April, the two sides battled four days before agreeing to a cease-fire. It was a brief, violent conflict involving tanks, artillery and drones that left hundreds of soldiers dead. In the fighting in Talish, Azeri soldiers executed and mutilated an elderly Armenian civilian couple and beheaded a captured Armenian soldier, leading a United States representative, Brad Sherman, Democrat of California and a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to call for an investigation into Azeri war crimes.

Although the Armenians are Christian and the Azeris are Muslim, the issue has little to do with religion. Azerbaijan insists it owns Nagorno-Karabakh, citing its right to territorial integrity. Nagorno-Karabakh argues that it is entitled to exist independently because of the right of all peoples to self-determination.

Certainly there are analysts who argue that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh are an occupying force. I don’t agree. But I don’t side with Nagorno-Karabakh simply because of my DNA. I believe that history is on the Armenians’ side.

In 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian majority — then part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic — voted to become part of the Armenian Soviet Republic. (In the 1920s, Karabakh’s Armenians had insisted that self-determination was their prerogative under the Soviet constitution. Nevertheless, in 1923, Joseph Stalin gave Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.) But the Soviet Union was incapable of managing the violence that erupted — including Azeri rage directed at Armenians in the Azerbaijani cities of Baku and Sumgait — forcing most Armenians to flee to Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh. On Sept. 2, 1991, Nagorno-Karabakh proclaimed itself an independent country, and for the next three years its Armenians fought a war with the Azeris, which they would win in 1994, with the help of Armenia itself. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 people would die, and perhaps as many as one million were displaced.

Nagorno-Karabakh is largely unrecognized by the international community (though seven American states have passed resolutions urging the United States government to support its independence). The republic is a fledgling democracy of 140,000 people, facing off against an oil-rich dictatorship with a population of 9.5 million. Its only ally is Armenia, which is often the small republic’s lifeline. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has assigned diplomats from France, Russia and the United States to try to broker a permanent agreement, but they’ve made little progress.

“Azerbaijan has shown consistently it is incapable of governing Nagorno-Karabakh,” said Ruben Melikyan to me when we had coffee recently in the Nagorno-Karabakh capital of Stepanakert. Mr. Melikyan is the country’s ombudsman, or human rights defender. “It’s not merely an issue of a people’s right to self-determination. It’s a people’s right to self-determination who are in peril of extermination.”

This is no small distinction. President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has threatened to shoot down passenger planes that fly into the new Stepanakert airport; the airport has yet to open. He promoted to major the Azeri soldier who murdered an Armenian soldier in his sleep during a peaceful, NATO-sponsored training seminar in Budapest. And most recently President Aliyev broke the cease-fire with a huge, unprovoked offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh in April, an onslaught that included the shelling of two schools. (It was nighttime so the schools were empty, but among the first casualties in the war was a 12-year-old boy killed in a missile attack.)

After spending time with people in Nagorno-Karabakh, it’s clear to me that the only way the nation will ever again be a part of Azerbaijan is if Azerbaijan conquers it. And despite Azerbaijan’s being vastly larger, I can’t imagine that ever will happen. Armenians had lived on this land for centuries before it was incorporated into Azerbaijan. My first day there I went to a baptism of 39 Armenian children in a church built in 1673. Dadivank, the Armenian monastery in the north, began construction in the ninth century. Its frescoes, which date from 1297, are as lovely as any I’ve seen in Tuscany.

Its people are fiercely protective of their home. Among the parents I met at that baptism were Anton and Areknaz Abkarian. Their three children, all under 5, were baptized that afternoon. They have a small farm. But when the Azeris attacked in April, Mr. Abkarian went straight to the front lines as a volunteer. His wife and his mother ran the farm.

“Who will defend my children and my family if not me?” Mr. Abkarian asked me rhetorically. He is a quiet, unassuming young man, but his smile is broad when he talks about his country or shares the honey from his apiary.

The fact is, the only dog Azerbaijan has in this fight is pride. It has the oil; Nagorno-Karabakh has scrub brush and pomegranates.

But for the Armenians it is a fight for survival. It is the retention of a part of our homeland. Yes, we were ethnically cleansed from Van and Anatolia and Cilicia — virtually all of Turkey but Istanbul — during the Armenian Genocide. Three out of every four of us there were systematically annihilated during World War I.

And so Nagorno-Karabakh is our line in the sand. It is why Anton Abkarian rushed to the front and Gegham Grigoryan traded his suit for a uniform. It is why this small country, as tiny as it is, always has enough soldiers for the trenches.

Chris Bohjalian is the author of 19 books, including “Midwives,” “The Sandcastle Girls” and the forthcoming, “The Sleepwalker.”

After 20 years to the homeland: A journey to the land of the ancestors together

My name is David Shorvoglian, I am 24 years old, and I come from the capital of Uzbekistan, the city of Tashkent, which is very similar to Yerevan with its boundless hospitality, rich and kind soul of people, and beautiful mountainous landscapes. I began my volunteer experience with Birthright Armenia in July 2023 and will stay there until mid-September. I decided to get to know Armenia better by visiting it and also to help my homeland by applying my skills as an IT specialist. I also wanted to enrich my Armenian culture and my horizons by socializing with other volunteers, attending cultural, sports and educational events. My volunteer activities took place in the capital of all Armenians, Yerevan, which I have come to love with all my heart. The last time I was in Yerevan with my family was 20 years ago, when I was 3 years old, where I was baptized in Grigor Lusavorich Church. I still remember many things from that time, because it was then that my encounter with God took place. In January 2023, I set a goal to visit my ancestral homeland Armenia again.

THE WAY TO ARMENIA THROUGH ARMENIAN ARMAT SCHOOL

My journey to Armenia started with Armat Armenian School , where I studied my native Armenian language. The school is located in the city of Krasnodar, where I currently reside, where every student can make new friends, learn Armenian, get acquainted with the Armenian culture, its centuries-old and rich history. It was at Armat School that I was introduced to Birthright Armenia. After several months of deliberation, I decided to go to my homeland and the homeland of my ancestors, Armenia.

BIRTHRIGHT ARMENIA: OPPORTUNITY FOR PERSONAL GROWTH AND NEW DISCOVERIES IN ARMENIA

I started my volunteer work with Birthright Armenia on July 5, 2023, and will continue until mid-September. Thanks to Birthright Armenia, I started an independent life away from my family. But I was not alone in Armenia, I always had the staff of the organization with me, who helped me on any issue. Independent life in Armenia made me look at myself and the world around me in a new way, discover new features in me, and I am grateful for this experience. I have always felt at home in the Birthright office. I made many friends from different parts of the world who were just like me, eager to get to know Armenia as best as possible. It was a great opportunity to improve my Armenian and English language level by communicating with volunteers from different countries.

MY JOBS AT BIRTHRIGHT ARMENIA

I worked in a company called Creative Educational Technologies LEGO Lab Education . LEGO Education in Armenia functions as a store of various Lego sets and as a science center. They teach children programming, designing, teamwork, help to develop logical and analytical thinking with the help of different LEGO sets. I was a volunteer trainer for 9 weeks, and at the end of my program, I became a certified trainer and co-author of new courses for group activities with children.

I enjoyed working and being on a team of professionals who know their craft. While volunteering in Yerevan, I quickly made friends with the team and together we went through a lot of things and achieved a lot in 9 weeks. Together we held a workshop in Yeraz Park, organized a meeting in honor of the arrival of LEGO representative from Norway, prepared as a team for the World Robotics Olympiad, which was held at AYB school in Yerevan. In addition to developing my professional skills, I discovered my talent as a video blogger. My team and I filmed various informative videos. I enjoyed teaching scenarios and introducing LEGO Education to the world in Armenia, I will continue to scale and develop this talent discovered in me.

I also worked for the Armenian Volunteer Corps , which is an opportunity for non-Armenians to come to Armenia to do short-term or long-term volunteer service. At AVC, I volunteered for 4 weeks in the position of Web Analyst. During my time there, I performed UX/UI analytics on various websites. While working in this position, I also expanded my range of applied skills and made new acquaintances.

HOST FAMILY

In my host family , I experienced the very Armenian hospitality I was surrounded by throughout my stay in Yerevan. I am glad that now I understand what an Armenian family should be like, with its customs, traditions, cuisine, and even the interior of an Armenian apartment has its distinctive feature of homeliness, which did not leave me indifferent. Through my family I have learned all the charm of Armenian cuisine, I will miss Aunt Armine's delicious food that she fed me every day, her care, and the kindness of her soul. Every member of the family was always kind to me, we always had something to talk about or just watch TV together.

PARTICIPATION IN THE 8TH PAN-ARMENIAN SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES

I took part with a team from Krasnodar in the 8th Pan-Armenian Summer Olympic Games, where I participated in badminton and mini-golf competitions. The period of the Olympic Games in Armenia will always remain in my memory as something new and unique, and an exciting experience in my life. All our Krasnodar team was at the opening of the games at the Shirak Stadium in Gyumri, which also impressed me a lot with its unique architecture and climate. The closing ceremony of the games was held on the territory of the temple of Garni, where I was also there for the last time 20 years ago. At that time, I never thought that 20 years later I would visit the Garni Temple, closing the 8th Pan-Armenian Olympic Games.

A LIFELONG CONNECTION WITH ARMENIA

I am now reflecting on my next visit to Yerevan. It is hard to say now when it might happen, but I plan to establish further cooperation with Armenia in the future. I believe that my summer 9-week trip to Yerevan 20 years later will not be my last. Yerevan has great potential to become a technological IT hub. I would like to help create new Digital Digital solutions for Armenia by bringing my experience and creative vision.

I am seriously considering future business trips or just visiting Armenia for a short period of time. And yes, I never had a chance to try the donuts at Ponchik-Monchik in Gyumri, where the opening ceremony of the 8th Pan-Armenian Summer Olympic Games was held at the Shirak Stadium.

Armenia is my homeland, a country that has given me so much in 9 weeks, warmed me with its love and care, and reminded me who I am. Thank you Birthright Armenia for this experience! I would like to conclude this fascinating essay about my experience in Armenia with these lines:

As a child, my mother always told me, "When going for a walk, don't run far away from home"

I don't say goodbye to Armenia. See you soon.

THIS MAY INTEREST YOU

Mon , Nov 17

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

Unfurling the rich tapestry of armenian culture.

This year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival will offer a window on Armenian visions of home

Ryan P. Smith

Correspondent

A modestly sized landlocked nation framed by the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian to the east, Armenia links the southernmost former Soviet Socialist Republics with the arid sprawl of the Middle East. Armenia’s own geography is heavily mountainous, its many ranges separated by sweeping plateaus of vivid green. The wind is stiff and the climate temperate, and the mountainsides teem with archaeological treasures of a long and meandering history.

Thousands of years ago, the land known as Armenia was roughly seven times the size of the current country. Yet even within the borders of contemporary Armenia, cathedrals, manuscript repositories, memorials and well-worn mountain paths are so dense as to offer the culturally and historically curious a seemingly endless array of avenues to explore.

This year, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival will be bringing deeply rooted Armenian culture to Washington, D.C. From food and handicrafts to music and dance, the festival, taking place in late June and early July, will provide an intimate look at an extremely complex nation. Catalonia , the autonomous region of northeast Spain, is featured alongside Armenia .

What exactly makes Armenia’s cultural landscape so fascinating?

Library of Congress Armenia area specialist Levon Avdoyan , Tufts Armenian architecture expert Christina Maranci , and the Smithsonian's Halle Butvin , curator of the festival's "Armenia: Creating Home" program explain the many nuances of the Armenian narrative.

What was Armenia’s early history like?

Given its strategic geographical status as a corridor between seas, Armenia spent much of its early history occupied by one of a host of neighboring superpowers. The period when Armenia was most able to thrive on its own terms, Levon Avodyan says, was when the powers surrounding it were evenly matched, and hence when none was able to dominate the region (historians call this principle Garsoïan’s Law , after Columbia University Armenia expert Nina Garsoïan ).

Foreign occupation was often brutal for the Armenian people. Yet it also resulted in the diversification of Armenian culture, and allowed Armenia to exert significant reciprocal influence on the cultures of its invaders. “Linguistically, you can show that this happened,” Avodoyan says. “Architecturally this happened.” He says Balkan cruciform churches may very well have their artistic roots in early Armenian designs.

What religious trends shaped Armenia?

It’s hard to say what life looked like in pre-Christian Armenia, Avdoyan admits, given that no Armenian written language existed to record historical events during that time. But there are certain things we can be reasonably sure about. Zoroastrianism, a pre-Islamic faith of Persian origin, predominated. But a wide array of regionally variant pagan belief systems also helped to define Armenian culture.

The spontaneous blending of religious beliefs was not uncommon. “Armenia was syncretistic,” Avdoyan says, meaning that the religious landscape was nonuniform and ever-changing . “The entire pagan world was syncretistic. ‘I like your god, we’re going to celebrate your god. Ah, Aphrodite sounds like our Arahit.’ That sort of thing.”

Armenia has long had strong ties with Christian religion. In fact, Armenia was the first nation ever to formally adopt Christianity as its official faith, in the early years of the fourth century A.D. According to many traditional sources, says Levon Avdoyan, “St. Gregory converted King Tiridates, and Tiridates proclaimed Christianity, and all was well.” Yet one hundred years after this supposedly smooth transition, acceptance of the new faith was still uneven, Avdoyan says, and the Armenian language arose as a means of helping the transition along.

“There was a plan put forth by King Vramshapu and the Catholicos (church patriarch) Sahak the Great to invent an alphabet so that they could further propagate the Christian faith,” he explains.

As the still-employed Greek-derived title “Catholicos” suggests, the Christian establishment that took hold in the fourth century was of a Greek orientation. But there is evidence of Christianity in Armenia even before then—more authentically Armenian Christianity adapted from Syriac beliefs coming in from the south. “From Tertullian’s testimony in the second century A.D.,” says Avdoyan, “we have some hints that a small Armenian state was Christian in around 257 A.D.”

Though this alternative take on Christianity was largely snuffed out by the early-fourth century pogroms of rabidly anti-Christian Roman Emperor Diocletian, Avdoyan says facets of it have endured to this day, likely including the Armenian custom of observing Christmas on January 6.

How did Armenia respond to the introduction of Christian beliefs? With the enshrinement of Christianity came a period characterized by what Avdoyan generously terms “relative stability” (major instances of conflict—including a still-famous battle of 451 AD that pitted Armenian nobles against invading Persians eager to reestablish Zoroastrianism as the official faith—continued to crop up). Yet the pagan lore of old did not evaporate entirely. Rather, in Christian Armenia, classic pagan myth was retrofitted to accord with the new faith.

“You can tell that some of these tales, about Ara the Beautiful , etc., have pagan antecedents but have been brought into the Christian world,” Avdoyan says. Old pagan themes remained, but the pagan names were changed to jibe with the Christian Bible.

The invention of an official language for the land of Armenia meant that religious tenets could be disseminated as never before. Armenia’s medieval period was characterized by the proliferation of ideas via richly detailed manuscripts.

What was special about medieval Armenia?

Armenian manuscripts are to this day world-renowned among medieval scholars. “They’re remarkable for their beauty,” Avdoyan says. Many have survived in such disparate places as the Matenadaran repository in Yerevan, the Armenian Catholic monasteries of San Lazzaro in Venice, and the Walters Art Museum in Maryland.

Historians define “medieval Armenia” loosely, but Avdoyan says most place its origin in the early fourth century, with the arrival of Christianity. Some, like Avodyan, carry it as far forward as the 16th century—or even beyond. “I put it with 1512,” Avdoyan says, “because that’s the date of the first published book. That’s the end of the manuscript tradition and the beginning of the print.”

What sets the manuscripts apart is their uniquely ornate illuminated lettering . “The Library of Congress recently bought a 1486 Armenian gospel book,” Avdoyan says, “and our conservationists got all excited because they noticed a pigment that didn’t exist in any other.” Discoveries like this are par for the course with Armenian manuscripts, which continue to draw academic fascination. “There’s still a lot to be learned about the pigments and styles.”

The structure of life in medieval Armenia was a far cry from what Westerners tend to picture when they hear the term “medieval.” A kind of feudalism did take hold for a time, Avdoyan says, but not that of lordships and knights. “Unlike feudalism in Europe, which was tied to the land,” he notes, “feudalism in Armenia was tied to the office. You had azats , the free, you had the nobles, and in a certain period you had the kings.” For a stretch of Armenian history, these divisions of office were rigidly enforced—everyone knew their place. “But by the ninth century, tenth century, it rather fell apart.”

One facet of Armenia’s medieval period that was more consistent was the majesty of the churches and other religious structures erected all across its mountainous topography. These creations are the focus of medieval Armenian art historian Christina Maranci.

Armenians take pride in their historic architecture. Why?

It is something of a rarity for a country’s distinctive architecture to inspire ardent national pride, but Christina Maranci says such is most definitely the case in Armenia. “Many Armenians will tell you about Armenian architecture,” she says. To this day, engineering is a highly revered discipline in Armenia, and many study it. “A lot of Armenians know very well how churches are built, and are proud of that.”

Maranci says that what makes Armenian art history so fascinating to study, even before the medieval period, is its simultaneous incorporation of outside techniques and refinement of its native ones. Before Christianity, she says, “you have what you would traditionally consider to be Near Eastern art—Assyrian art, Persian—but you also have evidence for Mediterranean classical traditions, like Hellenistic-looking sculpture and peristyles. Armenia provides a very useful complication of traditional categories of ancient art.”

But later architecture of the region—particularly the Christian architecture of the medieval period—is what it is best known for today.

How far back can we trace Armenian architecture?

With the dawn of national Christianity, Byzantine and Cappadocian influences began to take hold. And places of worship began to dot the land. “The first churches upon the conversion of Armenia to Christianity are largely basilicas,” Maranci notes. “They’re vaulted stone masonry structures, but they don’t use domes for the most part, and they don’t use the centralized planning” that many later Armenian churches claim as a hallmark.

By the seventh century, though, Maranci explains that Armenia began to embrace its own signature architectural style. “You have the domed centralized plan,” she says, which “is distinctive to Armenia and neighboring Georgia, and is distinct from Byzantine architecture, Syrian architecture and Cappadocian architecture.” Within the span of just a few decades, she says, centrally planned churches came to predominate in Armenia. And “it becomes ever more refined through the tenth century, eleventh century, and so on.”

As important in medieval Armenian church architecture as the churches themselves was their situation amid the natural flow of their surroundings. “The outside of the church was, from what we can tell, used in processions and ceremonies as well as the inside,” Maranci says. “In traditional Armenian churches, you see very clearly the way the church building is related to the landscape. That’s another piece that’s important.”

Many of these elegantly geometric models have endured in Armenian architecture through to the present day. Yet Maranci says that the Hamidian Massacres of the 1890s and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 to 1922 have exerted undeniable influences on Armenian architecture and art more broadly. “The recovery of medieval form now has to be mediated through this trauma,” she says. Modern Armenian art often subverts medieval forms to illustrate the annihilating effect of the bloodshed.

Moreover, since many Armenians emigrated out of the nation during or in the wake of these dark periods, diasporic Armenians have had to come up with their own takes on the traditional in new, unfamiliar environs. “You can see how American churches use prefab forms to replicate the Armenian churches,” she says by way of example. In lieu of Armenia’s incredibly sturdy rubble masonry technique—which dates back nearly two millennia—American communities have made do with plywood, drywall and reinforced concrete, improvising with their own materials yet staying true to the ancient architectural layouts.

What is significant about the Armenian diaspora(s)?

Many have heard the phrase “Armenian diaspora,” generally used as a blanket term to encompass those Armenians who fled the region around the time of the genocide and other killings. During and after World War I, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed—the Turkish government, for its part, disputes the death toll and denies that there was a genocide.

Avdoyan notes that, really, there was no one diaspora, but rather many distinct ones across a wide stretch of history. By using the singular term “diaspora,” Avdoyan believes we impute to the various immigrant groups of Armenia a sense of cohesion they do not possess.

“There is no central organization,” he says. “Each group has a different idea of what it means to be Armenian. Each one has a feeling that their Armenian-ness is more genuine or more pure. And it’s also generational.” The Armenians who fled the genocide have identities distinct from those of emigrants who left Armenia after the Lebanese Civil War, and distinct in a different way from those of the emigrants who have left Armenia since it secured its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. Avodoyan hopes that one day all the different diasporic generations will be able to come together for a cultural conference.

What aspects of Armenian culture will the Folklife Festival be highlighting?

Between the rich artistic and religious history of the Armenian homeland and the various cultural adaptations of diasporic Armenian populations worldwide, the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage had its work cut out for it in selecting elements of Armenian culture to showcase at this year’s Folklife Festival. The Folklife team settled on two major themes to explore—feasting and craft. These will be presented through the lens of home, an essential concept throughout the Armenian narrative.

On every day of the festival, which runs from June 27-July 1 and July 4-July 8, a dedicated “demonstration kitchen” will hold hourly presentations of Armenian recipes in action. Festival curator Halle Butvin calls special attention to Armenian methods of preserving food: “cheesemaking, pickling, making jams and drying herbs and fruits.”

The demonstration kitchen will also be showing off recipes featuring foraged foods, in honor of the self-sufficient food-gathering common in mountainous Armenia, as well as foods tied to the time-honored ritual of coming together for feasting: “Armenian barbecue, tolma, lavash, cheese, different salads. . . some of the major staples of an Armenian feast.”

Linked to feasting is Armenia’s dedication to its national holidays. “Vardavar, a pagan water-throwing tradition takes place on July 8 and Festivalgoers will get a chance to participate,” Butvin says. She says celebrants can expect to learn how to make such treats as gata (sweet bread), pakhlava (filo pastry stuffed with chopped nuts) and sujukh (threaded walnuts dipped in mulberry or grape syrup) for the occasion.

Diasporic Armenian eats will be prepared as well as time-honored homeland fare. Since “Armenian cultural life really does revolve around the home,” Butvin says, “we’ll have the whole site oriented around that, with the hearth—the tonir —at the center.”

Tonirs , the clay ovens in which Armenian lavash bread is cooked, are traditionally made specially by highly skilled Armenian craftsmen. One such craftsman will be on site at the Folklife Festival, walking visitors through the process by which he creates high-performance high-temperature ovens from scratch.

Another featured craft which speaks to the value Armenians place on architecture is the stone carving technique known as khachkar. Khachkars are memorial steles carved with depictions of the cross, and are iconic features of Armenian places of worship. Visitors will get hands-on exposure to the art of khachkar, as well as other longstanding Armenian specialties like woodcarving and rugmaking.

Musically, guests can expect a piquant blend of Armenian jazz and folk tunes. Butvin is looking forward to seeing the camaraderie between the various acts in the lineup, who all know one another and will be building on each other’s music as the festival progresses. “They will play in different groupings,” Butvin says—guests can expect “a lot of exchanges and influences taking place between the artists.”

And what would music be without dance? Butvin says the dance instruction component of the Folklife Festival will tie in thematically with the feasting traditions emphasized among the culinary tents. “Usually you eat, drink, listen to music, and then dance once you’re feeling a little tipsy,” Butvin says. “That’s kind of the process of the feast.”

The emphasis of the Armenian portion of the festival on home and family will contrast well with the Catalonian activities’ stress on street life. “The whole Catalonian site is focused around the street and the plaza and this public space,” Butvin says, “whereas the Armenia side is really focused on the home itself. It will be an interesting difference, to look at the two.”

Butvin is hopeful the festival will show visitors the wonders of Armenian culture while also impressing upon them the degree to which it has spread and evolved all over the globe. “All of these different objects and traditions help to create a sense of home for Armenians,” she says—even those Armenians “who are in diaspora, who are trying to hold on to this sense of Armenian-ness.”

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival takes place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., June 27 to July 1, and July 4 to July 8, 2018. Featured programs are "Catalonia: Tradition and Creativity from the Mediterranean" and "Armenia: Creating Home."

Get the latest on what's happening At the Smithsonian in your inbox.

Ryan P. Smith | READ MORE

Ryan graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Science, Technology & Society and now writes for both Smithsonian Magazine and the World Bank's Connect4Climate division. He is also a published crossword constructor and a voracious consumer of movies and video games.

Armenia and Artsakh T-shirts!

A photographic journey of my homeland, armenia.

This 226-page book contains 12 photo essays chronicling Peroomian's travels and experiences in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh from 2004 to 2011 during which he spent over 90 days in his ancestral homeland. In addition to road trips to well-known as well as many lesser known ancient sites, churches, and monuments, the essays include his experiences covering the 2008 presidential elections, commemorations of the Armenian Genocide, and the unveiling of a millennial church discovered in the forests of Karabakh. The book also features 215 stunning color and black and white photographs from these voyages. "With every short walk, and with every kilometer driven, I wiped clean the slate of my early impressions of Armenia, and fell in love with the vibrant landscape, teeming with life, with beauty, and with ancient wonders," writes Peroomian, who had first visited Armenia in 1980, the height of the Soviet rule and suppression of Armenian nationalism and identity. Vahé Peroomian is a space scientist by profession, but has taken every opportunity to pursue his fascination with photography and the beauty of the Gaian landscape. He prefers a hands-on approach and independent experimentation with photographic styles and techniques. He has found that the same off-the-wall approach that works in solving physics problems helps him see landscapes in a new light as well. The self-similar shapes in landscapes, and the play between cloud and landscape that characterize many of his photographs are a manifestation of this viewpoint. Vahé's photography is featured at http://www.vahep.com/

GCC trustee publishes photographic journey of Armenia

Glendale News Press, July 11, 2014

By Brittany Levine, [email protected]

Although Vahe Peroomian was born in California, he has always felt a connection to the landscape of his ancestral homeland: Armenia. That link, and his many visits to the country, inspired him to publish "A Photographic Journey of My Homeland, Armenia," which includes hundreds of photographs the space scientist and Glendale Community College trustee took during 90 days in Armenia between 2004 to 2011.

Peroomian is scheduled to discuss his 226-page book at Abril Bookstore, 415 E. Broadway, on July 17 at 8 p.m.

Q: What did you learn about Armenia through photographing the people and places within the country that you didn't know before?

People love to tell stories in Armenia, and this is what I feel enriched [me] the most. I've retold some of the stories and sayings in my book, as even a simple joke often gave more insight into the psyche of my compatriots as any photograph I took.

During most of my trips I was accompanied and guided by [a friend], Stepan Nalbandian, who is not only knowledgeable about the countryside, but is also passionate about protecting its ancient monuments. Together we visited many locations off the beaten path and of the radar of tour companies. More than once, he picked me up in the morning, and the first words out of his mouth were, "you'll see wonders today…" He was right every single time. The idyllic church in Ardvi, the valley in which Hnevank Monastery is nestled, the alpine highlands of Selim pass and the old road to Jermuk, lined with crystalline basalt cliffs rivaling Devil's Postpile National Monument [in Mammoth Lakes], are just a few. What I came to realize, though, was that photographing Armenia is going to be a lifelong journey.

Q: Did you learn anything new about yourself in the process?

I've had cameras since I was very young, and photography has always been a hobby for me. But what my trips to Armenia in 2003 and the connection I felt with the landscape did were to ignite a passion for photography in me, one that has not only led to this book, but also to numerous exhibitions of my work. I also realized how necessary it was for me, as a physicist, to balance the scientific side of my life with the artistic side that photography provides. Years ago, I promised myself to take time to view the sunrise or sunset at least once a month, and doing this while capturing the shifting light on the landscape is even more satisfying than I ever thought.

Q: In the book, you include photos of ancient sites, churches, monuments, presidential elections, commemorations of the Armenian Genocide, and the unveiling of a millennial church discovered in the forests of Karabakh, what was your favorite moment you were able to capture with your lens?

I'd have to say that the entire trip to unveil the millennial church in Nagorno-Karabakh was one of the most incredible experiences of my life: The incredibly arduous roads that took us to the remote village of Haytagh, the trek in the stifling summer heat to the church, the discovery of an ancient cemetery strewn with khatchkars (stones carved with crosses), my first glimpse of the church, and the stories told by my companions on the expedition and by the denizens of Haytagh during the trip.

The most photographically satisfying moment came in 2006, when I visited Haghartsin at 5 a.m. in the morning and waited for the first light of day to illuminate the monastery. The golden light I captured lasted less than 30 seconds, but it left an indelible impression.

Q: Lastly, anything else you wanted to add that I didn't ask you about?

One of the photography techniques that I've used extensively in Armenia and featured in my book is black-and-white infrared photography. I've had a camera converted specifically for this purpose, and all of the black-and-white photos in the last several chapters of the book are from my infrared camera….Leaves and grass appear snow white, and there is a lot more contrast in these photos…. Infrared photography is one of the ways that I express my vision of the Armenian landscape, a vision that is driven by the juxtaposition of ancient structures with the landscape, and the oft-forgotten importance of light and its texture in photography.

Navigation menu

Personal tools.

• Request account
• View source
• View history
• Armenian T-shirts
• Armenian News
• Armenia Guidebook
• Tumanyan Town
• Hostel in Lori
• Matchbox Museum
• Recent changes
• Random page
• What links here
• Related changes
• Special pages
• Printable version
• Permanent link
• Page information
• Browse properties
• This page was last edited on 14 July 2014, at 22:01.
• Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License unless otherwise noted.
• Privacy policy
• About armeniapedia.org
• Disclaimers

• [ April 23, 2024 ] Remembering the survivors and celebrating communities Victoria's Voice
• [ April 23, 2024 ] Armenian Legal Center to submit cases against 40 senior Azerbaijani officials for war crimes and human rights abuses Diaspora
• [ April 23, 2024 ] Message on the occasion of the 109th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide Diaspora
• [ April 23, 2024 ] April 24, 2024, a day of remembrance and resolve Op-Eds
• [ April 23, 2024 ] St. Gregory Church in Indian Orchard celebrates 90th anniversary Community News

Armenian Immigration to North America through the 1930s: A Compilation of Primary Sources

Researching Armenian genealogy presents unique challenges, in large part due to the scarcity of records in the Armenian homeland and the scattering of families who survived the Armenian Genocide. Many Armenians immigrated to North America in the latter part of the 1800s and in the early 1900s. Fortunately, for those of Armenian descent living in the US and Canada, a tremendous amount of information can be found in primary source records of these countries to help them to learn about their Armenian families. The Armenian Immigration Project explores nine different types of American primary sources related to Armenian immigrants during this time period, using an evidence-based methodology to abstract over 170,000 entries from these records and present them in a searchable, free, online database.

My paternal grandfather Dikran Arslanian was born around 1883 in the village of Sergevil, located in the kaza (county) of Keghi, sanjak of Erzurum (Garin), vilayet of Erzurum, in Turkey in the Ottoman Empire. He immigrated to the US through New York (Ellis Island) in 1906. Many of the men in his family also left Turkey in the years prior to the 1915 Genocide to find work in the US, Canada and western Europe in the hopes of bettering their family’s prospects and perhaps bringing their wives and children to join them. Of the 40 or so members of our extended Arslanian family remaining in Turkey in 1915, only two boys were known to have survived the Genocide. They were rescued from refugee camps in the Middle East after the end of World War I.

Dikran remained in the US, married a woman of French-Canadian descent and settled on the Pacific coast (Washington and Oregon). He finally arrived in Fresno, California in the early 1930s. My father was one of seven children born to this couple between 1918 and 1934 – first-generation Americans of Armenian and French ancestry.

As a teenager in the early 1970s, I became interested in learning more about my father’s Armenian family. My Armenian grandfather Dikran died in 1965, and my father knew very little about the Armenian side of his family (as he had been estranged from his father for many years). Dad referred me to one of his much older Armenian first cousins—Kevork, or “Uncle George” as we called him. He was born around 1895 and came to America in 1912. I met Uncle George at some family gatherings and later wrote to him with questions about our Arslanian family. George responded immediately, and we corresponded for several years. Not only did he share a lot about our Armenian family, but he gave me the addresses of several other older close relatives, including the two boys in our family who had survived the Genocide (who were then in their 60s and 70s). I put together similar questionnaires and mailed them to the other contacts, who promptly responded. Some of them also sent old photographs. One even provided a hand-drawn sketch of their home in Sergevil. (They all lived together in an extended household after my great-grandfather Sarkis Arslanian and his brother Garabed, the family patriarchs, were killed in the massacres of 1895-1896.)

The information I obtained from my correspondence with my older relatives in the 1970s enabled me to piece together our family story, but left a number of questions unanswered. In these days before the internet, widespread availability of primary source records and DNA technology, I figured that was as far as I was going to get in understanding the history of my Armenian family. At least I was able to meet some of my extended Arslanian family living in the US, England and France.

Primary Sources

Over the next several decades, I started researching primary sources to augment the information I had already learned about my Armenian family. Primary sources are official documents created near the time of the event for governmental, religious or commercial purposes, as well as unofficial material (such as correspondence or missing persons ads) created by someone with first-hand knowledge of certain facts. My research started with the general availability of the 1910 federal census, which was released to the public (via microfilm) in 1982, after a legal waiting period of 72 years. My Armenian grandfather and several of his family and fellow villagers first appeared in that census.

In addition to censuses, primary sources include vital records (births, marriages and deaths), military records (World War I and World War II draft registrations), ship manifests, citizenship records (naturalization and passport applications) and newspapers (especially missing persons ads). In those days, some of the records were available from the US and state and local governments in the form of microfilm, microfiche and paper files. Other records could be found in county courthouses and archives. During my business and personal travel in the 1980s and 1990s, I often set aside a day or two for genealogical research in courthouses, archives and cemeteries or for meeting and interviewing relatives.

The commercial availability of the internet in the 1990s was a game-changer for genealogists. Not only did forums emerge that allowed researchers to collaborate, but all kinds of different primary records started to become available online. For my Armenian research, the most important of these were the collections of ship manifests, starting with the Ellis Island website around the year 2000. I was able to take my Armenian research notes from the early 1970s and locate many of the individuals on the original ship manifests. Not only did these records reveal the relatives or acquaintances they were joining in America, but they listed (for arrivals in 1907 and later) the names and relationships of the ones they were leaving in the ‘old country.’ Many of the names of family and friends were previously unknown to me, leading to more research possibilities (new information on my Armenian family, at last!)

I became interested in learning more about other Armenian immigrants to America who originated in my grandfather’s home kaza of Keghi and eventually compiled a spreadsheet of over 2,500 immigrants from Keghi who entered America through Ellis Island. (Some were related to my Arslanian family, but I eventually learned that Keghi was quite a large kaza, consisting of over 50 Armenian villages clustered around the principal town of the kaza, called Keghi Kasaba.) To learn more about these Keghi immigrants to America, I tried to see if I could find them in the US and Canada federal census records and military draft registrations (and created spreadsheets for those).

At some point, I realized the significance of this approach for anyone researching their Armenian family who immigrated to America. I decided to expand my research beyond Keghi to include anyone of Armenian ancestry, regardless of their place of origin. More records became available online – ship manifests for ports other than Ellis Island, censuses for later years, citizenship records, vital records, newspapers, etc. (I created many more spreadsheets.)

Linkage of Primary Sources

It soon became apparent to me that there was tremendous value to be gained by looking at a number of different primary sources when researching individuals and family groups. You get a much more complete picture of a person’s history by combining information in a holistic fashion from different primary sources and timeframes, much more than you find in just a single record:

• date and place of birth (including town/village)
• interrelationships of individuals (relatives, neighbors from villages/towns in the “Old Country” and in America)
• dates and places of marriage(s) and death
• where they lived and how they got from one place to another
• occupation(s)
• how they lived and what they did
• photographs 

In the 1970s, I learned that by sending the same questionnaire to different older family members, their answers didn’t always agree. Dates were problematic. (Didn’t people know their own birthdays or that of their relatives?) Sometimes the chronology of events and names of people were inconsistent. The same thing, I realized, applied when looking at primary source records. They often don’t agree. Dates are off. Place names and personal names are spelled dozens of different ways. This is the nature of research with primary sources. Rarely will all of the information in a particular record be entirely correct. Often, it will conflict with a family’s oral traditions (memories being flawed, as well). Research of any kind is messy. You can’t take anything verbatim. It is important to look at the entirety of a person’s “paper trail” of primary records to look for corroboration and discrepancies and make a judgment as to which information is likely to be correct, which is incorrect and what information you may never know.

Why are primary records not entirely accurate? Here are some of the possible explanations.

• Informant didn’t know
• Error in transcribing between work document and official document (or copying of official document)
• Lack of understanding between clerk and informant due to language difference
• Change of place names, borders; no clarity regarding level of place to use in the administrative hierarchy (e.g., village/town, kaza, sanjak, vilayet)
• Delay in time between event and recording of information
• Deliberate falsification (informant or clerk)

In general, information in a primary source is usually quite accurate with respect to things happening at the time of the record, assuming that the informant was knowledgeable. For example, a death certificate is usually correct for things like the decedent’s name, address, occupation, date and place of death, cause of death, and place of burial (or removal). That same death certificate may not be accurate for things like the decedent’s date and place of birth and names of the parents, since those things may not have been known first-hand to the informant, especially if the decedent was elderly.

Another good reason for gathering information from as many primary sources as possible for an individual is to uncover that “gem.” Many times I have gathered information for a person across many different types of primary sources, and one (and only one) of those sources contained a piece of information that allowed me to break through a “brick wall” and solve a puzzle that had perplexed family researchers for years. Perhaps there was an aunt living in the household in the 1930 census whose identity finally enabled me to identify that person’s parents. Or maybe the village of the person’s birth is only shown in the World War II draft registration (all other records for that individual giving just the name of the kaza, sanjak, vilayet or country).

After gathering information on Armenian immigrants to North America (US and Canada) from many different types of primary sources, tens of thousands of rows in multiple spreadsheets, I was challenged with how best to present this information to a global audience. At first, I just created pdf files of the spreadsheets and published them on a web server. This was not satisfactory for a number of reasons. The amount of information couldn’t easily fit on a single sheet (even in landscape mode). Each different sort order required its own spreadsheet, and it was almost impossible to link together all of the information for an individual across all of the different primary source records.

Around 2015, I solved many of these problems by organizing information from these different primary sources into tables within a database, and then publishing that database along with easy-to-use search tools to quickly view the information (over 170,000 entries) in a variety of different ways, even a consolidated view for an individual (linking all of that person’s records together).

Evidence-based Methodology

Many of the purported genealogies published in books and online are nothing more than a repetition of someone else’s mistakes due to shoddy or inadequate research. Early on, I tried to carefully document primary sources to support each relationship or event (birth, marriage or death) in my own family genealogies. Even if the primary sources are conflicting, as they often are, someone years later could at least examine each of the cited sources to draw their own conclusions.

In my research of Armenian immigrants to America (the Armenian Immigration Project), I have not attempted to document genealogies of any of the families other than my own. Rather, I am more interested in providing them with original evidence and clues that they can use to construct their own family trees or gain a better understanding of their own family histories. My role is more like an archaeologist digging up bones and artifacts, and then displaying, categorizing, cataloguing and indexing my finds. My objective is to allow others to find new information about the subjects of their research. 

By gathering as much evidence from primary source material for an individual (and their close connections), researchers will be able to determine which facts are independently corroborated and which ones conflict, and then use their informed judgment to develop a narrative of their family history. Many of us are uncomfortable with uncertainty. We need to learn to accept that some level of uncertainty is unavoidable. 

Oftentimes, information from primary sources will be in direct conflict with an oral family tradition that has been repeated (and probably embellished) for decades. Admittedly, it is sometimes hard to let go of these oral traditions. But that is usually the case with historical research.

Structure of Armenian Immigration Project Website

The project web site consists of two pages: Home and Project Reports and Queries .

The Home page is a description of the project – its background and each of the nine primary sources. For each primary source, a link is provided to allow you to download the entire database table in .csv format. You may import this file into your own spreadsheet program or database to create your own reports or do your own analysis. The character set is utf-8, and the column separator is a semicolon.

The Project Reports & Queries page is the workhorse of the project, allowing you to search through the more than 170,000 entries contained within the database tables. A report is a summary of data in a table (e.g., top joining street addresses on ship manifests ). A query allows you to use various search criteria to find individual entries (abstracts) of the primary sources. Within the abstracts, you will often find links to other abstracts relating to the same individual or to someone in that person’s network (a relative, friend, or associate). This linkage of the abstracts is the key analytical benefit of the project.

In most cases, the abstracts do not provide a linkage to the actual image of the primary source record. There are several reasons why I chose not to do this. These include the time it would take to clip a discrete image and point to it, the fact that some types of records (like ship manifests and marriage registers) don’t lend themselves to just clipping the entry of interest without getting the whole large page with headings, the issue with links to the sources themselves (on sites like Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org) becoming outdated and invalid, as well as possible issues with intellectual property rights. For the Ads table, I present images of missing persons ads. For some of the records in the Deaths table, I include an obituary or news item relating to the person’s death. Published content, like American newspapers, are in the public domain after 75 years. Also, Fair Use guidelines allow their selective use for this type of scholarly research.

Project Reports & Queries Page

The Project Reports & Queries page allows you to search through any of the nine database tables corresponding to primary sources, as well as a combined search (across all tables at once). 

At the top is a sampling of five individual photographs. These photographs are part of a collection of over 4,000 photographs of Armenian immigrants whose entries are in the project. When you refresh the webpage, five more randomly chosen photographs will appear. If you click on a photograph, it will take you to that person’s entry. Presenting these faces is a way to help the data (names, dates and places) come alive. 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Each section on this page (delineated by headers with a yellow background) corresponds to one of the primary sources in the database. For example, you can run a query or report for the Deaths table, which includes abstracts of death registers and certificates. There are currently 3,883 entries in the table. To run the query or report, click the hot link. There are several different ways to search each table.

Let’s turn to the concept of roles. Each type of primary source record may mention one or more individuals. For example, in the death records, you will find the deceased person, his/her spouse and the parents of the deceased.

Next, how do we deal with all of the different spelling variations of personal names? For most last names, we will often find dozens of different spellings in the primary sources. Here is a sampling of those found for the last name Կրճիկեան. The transliteration of a name to the Latin alphabet is different for Western Armenian versus Eastern Armenian. It can also differ depending on where the record was written (by a French-speaking clerk preparing a ship manifest for a voyage from Le Havre or a military draft registrar in Fresno writing down a phonetic approximation of the name using American English conventions). When abstracting the names from the primary sources (those written in the Latin alphabet), I transcribed them exactly as written, so you can search across all of the different spelling variations.

To make it easier to find a last name across all of the different spelling variations, names that are phonetically similar have been grouped together under a label called the Last Name (Std.). The variations of the name Կրճիկեան can be found under the Last Name (Std.) of Grjigian. The labels are usually the Western Armenian transliteration in a style you will typically find in the US. This is not to say that this is the correct spelling of the transliterated name, as different families (or branches of the same family) may have their own spelling preferences. Sometimes, different last names may be grouped together if their spelling variations are hard to distinguish from one another or if they are based on the same root (e.g., Hagopian and Yacoubian). If a last name has commonly been anglicized to its American English equivalent (e.g., Arslanian to Lion or Lyons), you will find it grouped with the original Armenian name.

On each of the Query pages, you will find a button for a utility that maps any last name in the database to its standardized last name.

Place names are another challenge . In the Ottoman Empire, many towns and villages had different Armenian names than Turkish names, such as Garin/Erzurum, Dikranagerd/Diyarbekir, Kharpert/Harput, or Paghesh/Bitlis. Even the Turkish names were spelled differently in western European and American publications of that time (e.g., Erzurum vs. Erzeroum). After the formation of the Republic of Turkey following the end of World War I, many of the names were changed further (e.g., Smyrna to Izmir, Constantinople to Istanbul and Harput to Elazig). Of course, any place name could be found spelled dozens of different ways that are rough phonetic approximations on primary sources in American records. The same applies to names of places in the former Russian Empire (Alexandropol to Leninakan to Gyumri), now the Republic of Armenia. 

For place names, the Armenian Immigration Project uses the names in place at the start of World War I (in 1914), using the style most commonly found on American maps and in English-language publications. When referring to places in Turkey, the administrative hierarchy of place names in use at that time is used. For example, my paternal grandfather’s village of birth is referred to as Keghi (Sergevil), Erzurum, Turkey, using the kaza (Keghi), followed by the town/village name in parentheses, then the vilayet (province), then the country. For places that were then in the Russian Empire (now the Republic of Armenia), the towns and villages in the okrug of Kars are grouped together, as are those in the uyezd of Alexandropol. (Kars was recaptured by the Turks and incorporated back into Turkey in 1921.)

Example of Consolidated View with Linkages

One of my key objectives for this project is to show a consolidated view of information from primary source records for individual immigrants to America. This can be illustrated with the view for my paternal grandfather Dikran “Dick” Arslanian: 

The consolidated view is built around the immigrant’s ship manifest (or border crossing entry, in the event that the person arrived in the US by land through Canada or Mexico). Dikran arrived in America through New York (Ellis Island) on November 24, 1906 aboard the ship La Provence, which departed the port of Le Havre, France on November 17, 1906 (a voyage of seven days). He had traveled from his home village in Turkey to the Black Sea port of Batum (then in Russia), which was listed as his Last Residence. From there, he eventually reached France to begin the final leg of his journey to the US. Dikran, like many Armenian immigrants to America, traveled with others from his home village. To see others on his voyage, click the little ship icon. (This will bring up an additional view of voyages for that year, positioned with that particular voyage at the top of the screen. Give it about 10 seconds or so to refresh the screen for heavy immigration years like 1913 and 1921.) 

The immigrant’s place of birth first appeared in the ship manifests of late 1906. As seen in Dikran’s entry, it was erroneously listed as Batum. (This is typical with many of the 1906 ship manifests, conflating the places of birth and last residence; records of 1907 and later are generally more accurate in this respect.)

Many immigrants to America, particularly men, traveled back and forth multiple times. Dikran did not. Were this the case, you would see one or more Other Immigrant IDs listed, with hot links that enable you to view abstracts of those ship manifests, as well.

If an individual’s direct male descendant had a Y-chromosome DNA test performed (typically through the Armenian DNA Project at FamilyTreeDNA ), his results and a contact name would be listed here. This can be used, in Dikran’s case, to determine if other Arslanians are of the same family as him. (Most are not, unless they were from the same village in Keghi.) To be of the same family, their y-DNA results would need to be virtually identical. This field could also display the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) results for female immigrants. Here are the current haplogroup results for the Armenian Immigration Project database. This is a relatively new feature, which I hope will be used broadly by descendants of Armenian immigrants in America to find other members of their families.

Starting with ship manifests (to the US) in 1907, a column appeared for “The name and complete address of nearest relative or friend in country whence alien came.” In my database, I refer to this as the Leaving role (with Name, Relationship, Immigrant ID and Location). This field often contains the name of a spouse or parent in the Old Country who may or may not have come to America. (In Dikran’s case, this field is blank, since he traveled in 1906.)

Starting in about the year 1900, ship manifest entries showed the name, relationship, and street address of the person in America (“relative or friend”) they were joining (i.e., the Joining role in my database). In Dikran’s case, he was joining his older brother Marouke Arslanian in Madison, Illinois (near Granite City). By clicking on the hot link for Marouke’s Joining Immigrant ID, you can view all the information I have found for Marouke (whose photo appears above the Joining section of this page).

In the Comments field, there’s more additional information found for the immigrant on the ship manifest entry, such as if they were deported or had distinguishing physical characteristics (deformities, scars, tattoos, blue eyes, etc.).

The most important feature of this consolidated view are linkages to other entries appearing in my database for that same individual from the different types of primary sources records, which appear in the bottom section of this page. To the left of each entry, you will find a small icon depicting a magnifying glass. Clicking this icon will bring you to a view of an abstract for that record, which may itself contain linkages to other entries. For example, you will find entries for Dikran in the 1910, 1920 and 1930 census, the World War I draft registration, a naturalization application from 1920, his 1912 and 1918 marriages (the latter one to my grandmother) and his 1965 death certificate from Modesto, California.

Note that his birth date is inconsistent from entry to entry, which is typical for Armenian immigrants to America. Also, there are a number of different spellings for his first and last names.

Every few months, I refresh the online version of the Armenian Immigration Project database with new entries. This consolidated view will automatically incorporate additional entries for the immigrant with each refresh. 

Doing an exhaustive search for your relatives in primary documentary sources takes a lot of time and patience, but it can be very rewarding and gratifying. You may find a personal signature or even a photograph that you’ve never seen before (in naturalization applications starting in 1930 and passport applications starting in 1915). Ship manifests may reveal new names and connections, as well as show how your relatives got to America. The decennial censuses of the US and Canada often show extended family groupings soon after they arrived. Be prepared for surprises, as family anecdotes are almost never completely accurate. Keep an open mind and have fun.

• Latest Posts

Mark Arslan

Latest posts by mark arslan ( see all ).

• Armenian Immigration to North America through the 1930s: A Compilation of Primary Sources - November 5, 2021
• So Where In Armenia Was Your Family From? - January 29, 2019
• The Immigration Agents Changed My Family Name – Not! - September 11, 2018

Mark, thank you for all that you have done. This is an incredible and an enormous gift to the Armenian people.

Thank you for all of your hard work compiling this info – I have spent years piecing together as much data as I can about my great grandparents history and I was able to make significant progress thanks to your database.

Not sure if I am able to leave requests, but I have a few photos circa 1900-1915 that have handwritten notes on the back – but they are in Armenian. Is there a good place to share this to help get translation? They also include photos from outside the family, it almost seems like it was a women’s rotary club type organization. Figure it can’t hurt to ask, thanks so much again :)

Thanks for your kind words, Stephanie. I suggest that you join the Armenian Genealogy group on Facebook and post high quality images of the photos and the notes on the back. Members of our group are very helpful in translating those.

My uncle Lt. Billy Vincent was a “Tatiosian “Tattiosian His mom was Teran Tatiosian. He was a WW2 hero and arminian. I want arminians to know about him and the town he saved in France. You can look him up on Google. The french town has a big monument and on Aug . 13th each year they honor him and what he did. He is a true Arminian hero Thank you John Lindsley You can please share this

My goodness Mark! What a job and quite a HERO you are to many of us struggling to find our ancestors. It is an adventure for sure, to search all you have put together. I am now trying to link you as an Arslan to my husband’s Uncle Jack Melkonian’s wife Evelyn Arslan b.1920. He was b.1921 Chelsea MA d.1968 LA CA. His father Misak Melkonian (b.1884 Armenia d.1960 SF CA) and wife Rose (Emerzian) (b.1892 d.1943 SF CA) and their family left MA to Fresno, then most went to SF CA, Jack & Evelyn went to LA CA. Evelyn’s father was Elijah M. Arslan b.1870 and mother Margaret Yoosef b.1886. Her father Garabed Charles Yousuf b.1849, mother Maritza Ilbegian b.1860. Maritza’s sister Amarila Anna b.1863 married Hovagim Arslan b.1850. Their 2 sons Thomas Hovagim Arslan b.1885 and Harry Arslan (b.1899 d.1972 SF CA) who were quite involved with our Melkonian family, mainly in Fresno, then SF CA. Harry worked at Thomas’ farm in Fresno, at some point married Loretta T. (MNU) and they lived in SF CA, he worked and lived with our Melkonian families at several places in SF CA. So perhaps, Uncle Harry is connected somehow to your Arlsan family! I have 32k people in My Heritage right now, and the Armenian trees/branches are growing quickly thanks to your hard work! Thank you again, Linda

Your efforts for all of us has brought great happiness to our families. WE ARE ARMENIAN, now and forever! We all thank you for bringing our ancestors to light. My husband passed away this last two weeks, and I am looking forward to having the time to revisit the site. I see the Melkonian or Nersesian names and my heart skips a beat! God bless you!

Dear Mr. Arslan: My husband, Robert Riggs, Professor and Chair Emeritus of Music at University of Mississippi, and I were friends and colleagues of the late Ed Avadesian of MA. I also have very old Armenian genealogy —the Kings of Armenia and East Roman Emperors, through my mother’s royal European heritage. I noticed your comments on Shaver/ Schaeffer ancestry at another site. I descend from Johann Nicholas Schaeffer through his daughter Anna Barbara Schaeffer Steininger.

Hello Mark. I was pleased to find your Armenian Immigration Project some years back. Now I am unable to find it anywhere online. My grandparents and their extended families (Dertadian, Tookmanian) came here from various places after WWI. A cousin is here from Boston and I was telling her about it. Now we are unable to look up anything. Your research is invaluable and I appreciate it so much. How can I find this information?

Thank you so much.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Sign me up for the newsletter!

Copyright © 2021 | The Armenian Weekly

Leaving sunny Southern California for another taste of Armenia

I was originally scheduled to stay in Armenia for a month, that was back in August of 2023. I left sunny Southern California for another taste of Armenia’s breathtaking highlands, rivers and rich history.  The incredible AVC staff welcomed me with open arms and offered me serval different options for placements. I knew I had a great desire to work with children, so I chose The Kharberd Specialized Orphanage, an organization supporting children with varying disabilities.  Most of these children are in wheelchairs and are unable to speak, however we found our own unique way to communicate with one another.  There I was responsible for feeding these sweet angels’ breakfast and lunch and taking them out into the courtyard for some fresh air and to enjoy the gentle breeze.  We would habitually sit under the lush grape vines, listen to music and watch videos of the Pacific Ocean on my phone.  The way their beautiful almond-shaped eyes would light up in amazement is something I will keep close to my heart forever.    

During this time, sovereign Armenia was bustling.  The cafes and restaurants in Yerevan were always full. Music could be heard from nightclubs and pubs as you walked past. Citizens and tourists flooded the streets to enjoy the crisp autumn weather prior to the upcoming winter months. However, the situation in Artsakh during this exact same time was a nightmare, to say the least and things were about to get much worse.  

September 26, 2023, I (along with 2 other volunteers) made the instinctive decision to head to Goris (ground zero) and catapult ourselves into the chaos that will forever be a part of our history.  120,000 Armenian citizens of Artsakh were forced to leave their homes, their lives, their everything during this modern-day Genocide and exodus that began on September 19.  I was just one of a handful of volunteers to arrive on that day, which happened to be hours before the first bus of displaced Artsakhtsis arrived.  Coincidentally, Arina Zohrabian, the director of AVC, called me on route that day.  Once I explained to her where I was going and reassured her that I would check in with her frequently, she asked me to observe and report back as to what the critical needs were.  After relaying some information over the next few days, volunteers from both AVC and Birthright began to arrive in Goris for the much-needed support and assistance.  Almost immediately following this, AVC/BR decided to create a Rapid Response Team to aid and assist the displaced residents of Artsakh, which included working in conjunction with World Central Kitchen.  I would like to believe that I had a hand in the conception of this team and its ability to reach out to as many displaced Artsakhtsis as possible.  

The Fresno Bee equals Full Circle

One Way Ticket to the Homeland

Since my return, I have been volunteering with AGBU (also a partner with AVC) with multiple initiatives/programs.  The staff at AGBU Armenia, including a few who worked at the AGBU Artsakkh office, have become very dear and very valuable friends of mine.  We’ve travelled to almost all the regions in Armenia, meeting with hundreds of displaced families, delivering and distributing heaters, blankets, food boxes, clothing etc… In December of 2023, we participated in several Christmas parties along with wrapping and handing out thousands of presents for both local children and those from Artsakh.  The joy, the giggles and laughter we were able to offer these children will never be forgotten.  It truly is better to give than to receive.

My Love Story  

Joining AVC can be the nudge you didn’t know you needed to finding your passion.    

To my non-Armenian friends curious or on the fence about coming to Armenia, come, come experience the endless beauty, unmatched hospitality, genuine charm and magical mystery of this breathtaking country.  Come and fall in love.   

To my fellow Diasporans across the globe, HET ARI, COME HOME, Armenia needs you.

A Photographic Journey of my Homeland, Armenia

A photographic Journey of my Homeland, Armenia chronicles Vahé Peroomian's travels in Armenia from 2004 to 2011. This 220-page book, presented in PDF format, contains 12 photo essays with 215 color and black and white photographs of Armenia. Also included are 10 maps showing the locations Vahé visited.  

The book is presented in PDF format, and can be viewed on PCs, Macs, iPads, and any other device capable of reading PDF documents.

Payment is through PayPal, which securely accepts all credit cards.

You will get a PDF (24MB) file

Discount has been applied.

Powered by Payhip | Terms

Privacy | GDPR | EU VAT | Sell Digital Downloads | Sell Memberships | Blog

Book Funnel | Content Creator | Digital Products | How to make a vrchat avatar | How to write an ebook | How to sell ebooks

Share And Get A Discount

Share this on Facebook to get a % discount.

Coupon Code Discount

Type your coupon code here:

The Old Bridge, Heidelberg, Germany. Photo by Zhong Feng/Getty

Return of the descendants

I migrated to my ancestral homeland in a search for identity. it proved to be a humbling experience in (un)belonging.

by Jessica Buchleitner   + BIO

A physician motions for me to enter the institutional labyrinth of Impfzentrum booths. Once inside, my hands press flat and sticky against my US passport, German residency title and COVID-19 vaccine card. The doctor’s cobalt eyes squint beneath her mask, forming deep frown lines as she peers in suspended bewilderment, muttering at my documents. I ask her to clarify.

‘You’re a Buchleitner and not a native German speaker?!’ Her astonishment and disgust flood me with shame.

What does it mean to return to a land you are supposed to belong to as a descendant but in which you are functionally a foreigner?

Misspelled on my birth certificate with a visible strikethrough, my German family name always proved difficult for Americans, making me an easy target for school-playground bullying and assumptions about my nationality that left me feeling alien. Absent any accompanying grandparents’ memories, recipes, customs or folklore, it remained a phantom identifier with a disembodied lineage.

By divine miracle or sheer coincidence, two months after my first trip to Germany in 2009, where I had a premonition while perched on Heidelberg’s arch bridge that I would return, a distant relative contacted my father with news that felt almost like a premonition: she had painstakingly documented the Buchleitner genealogy from 1520 onward, chronicling the emigration of four sets of ancestors from Saarbrücken to Pennsylvania in the mid-1800s, offering answers to our missing lineage. Craving religious and political freedom, avoiding compulsory military service, and overcoming economic hardship were reasons enough to make a hellish months-long journey to a departure port and then dodge outbreaks of cholera, typhus and smallpox in steerage-class ship accommodations.

When I was leaving Germany, it had seemed as if my ancestors were beckoning me to return. But that wouldn’t happen for another decade, after I became a finalist for the Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship and fell in love with a German man I’d met in the Temple of the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok. In 2019, I stuffed my keepsakes into three zip-tied suitcases and, though I had no grasp of the German language at all, decided I was migrating to Munich indefinitely.

With a perception of Germany as a methodical, organised utopia to emulate, I assumed my integration would come naturally due to my lineage and new relationship, sooner rather than later granting me an identity to match my name. Within months, however, the assimilation challenges boiled me down to a flicker. Everyday moments of pretending I understood a store clerk’s questions while flanked by impatient customers proved daunting. When strangers barked orders at crosswalks, I awkwardly smiled and nodded. A deep purgatory of straddling an ancestral place that labelled me Ausländerin (foreigner) amassed. ‘Buchleitner’ became something to justify everywhere names matter: from my Frauenärtzin ’s (gynecologist’s) office to the Bürgerbüro (citizen’s office) to airport passport control, producing confusion. Everyone wanted to know how an American , sans German husband, sans emigrated German parents, Oma or Opa , could possess such a name.

I am not alone in my quest to belong somewhere. In the book Birchland: A Journey Home to Norway (1939), Joran Birkeland, the US-born daughter of Norwegian parents, chronicles her return to Norway to discover her roots, sent by an irresistible urge. At the time, it was a highly publicised representation of our American (and human) will to pilgrimage to ancestral homelands. Nested on territories taken from Native Americans, inhabitants of North America today often feel like a collection of refugees and migrants united in missing our origin, thrown into a melting pot and dizzied by our embodiment of multiple lineage ties.

The rise of consumer DNA testing companies indicates that Americans grapple with a sense of alienation from their roots. As of 2019, more than 26 million consumers had added their DNA to four leading commercial ancestry and health databases, according to MIT Technology Review . About one in seven US adults report having used a mail-in DNA testing service from companies such as AncestryDNA or 23andMe, according to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center. When asked about their reasons, the majority ( 87 per cent ) say they wanted to learn more about where their family came from. AncestryDNA even offers personalised travel to testers craving a toe-touch with origin destinations. According to the researchers Solène Prince and Aydan Mehtiyeva, a process of self-discovery that sometimes includes ancestral tourism is increasingly significant for those feeling alienated from their roots and hoping to trace their family lineage. Voyaging to a heritage place is viewed as a form of affective sacred pilgrimage or rite of passage, building a larger narrative about one’s past.

With her young son, the travel journalist Sheeka Sanahori traced her great-grandmother’s journey from Mississippi to Missouri during the Great Migration, when an estimated 6 million Black Americans left the southern United States between the 1910s and the ’70s. Her desire to make the journey began after she became pregnant and dove into genealogy, scouring public documents and notes in a family Bible.

‘I always had this idea that I would return … We’re called here to heal the rift from a past generation’

‘When the train was moving, I noticed some of the trees were probably still there when my family came through,’ she told me. ‘I started to pay attention to small details, feeling the energy and breathing the air.’

Genealogy tests offer empirical snapshots, but they can’t fully explain one’s nuanced pull to an ancestral homeland. While tourism whets tastes and experiences, migration is perhaps the greatest length we will go in our search for identity and belonging. Others I interviewed had various reasons for migrating or solidifying transnational ties to their ancestral homeland, perceiving it as a cultural centre.

The writer Dan Q Dao moved from the US to Saigon in late 2022. His parents fled Vietnam as teenage refugees in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War. In his 2020 essay for Condé Nast Traveler , he describes being ‘homesick for a place [he] hadn’t yet visited’ as a young child, and the ‘convoluted topic’ of returning to the homeland on family trips in support of his parents’ non-profit organisation, which builds schools in rural Vietnam. Dao is Việt Kiều – a phrase referring to ‘Vietnamese sojourners’, a person of Vietnamese descent who was born or lives overseas. He has since discovered a local community of others with similar ties.

‘I always had this idea that I would return,’ he told me. ‘I felt out of place my entire life. Most of us were used to perceiving the country in the shadow of our parents. Once we met each other and socialised, we broke barriers. We’re called here to heal the rift from a past generation. I also found comfort in witnessing Saigon’s thriving, powerful queer community. Vietnam is a mystical place.’

The performing artist James Monroe Števko theorises that Americans return to ancestral places because they lack a sense of community or belonging. ‘People love storytelling,’ he told me. ‘They want stories about themselves. Americans need that. We are looking for our history. All human history has been about stories passed down from generation to generation. That is perhaps what compels me to search for information.’

Števko found his great-grandfather’s military draft card in a photo album and traced him to Rovňany, Slovakia. He then evolved his transnational identity by making two heritage pilgrimages to Slovakia to dive deep into local culture, took a 10-week intensive Slovak language course, attended events, and applied for ancestral citizenship, which required on-the-ground investigation into his family background.

‘At a ski resort, a local woman wrote on paper that she granted me my citizenship,’ he told me. ‘People are very welcoming to me due to my lineage and have helped me in countless ways uncover more.’

D espite blending in with her name and appearance while abroad in Tokyo, the sociologist Jane Yamashiro felt like a cultural foreigner at times, prompting her to pursue studies into the meaning of ‘Japaneseness’. Between 2004 and 2015, she chronicled ethnographic fieldwork in the greater Tokyo area, interviews in both Japan and the US (mainland and Hawaii), and other research in her book Redefining Japaneseness: Japanese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland ( 2017 ) to understand the ‘further complications that arise when you go “where you’re from”’.

Migration research is heavily centred on diasporas – migrants and descendants of migrants, whose identity and sense of belonging have been shaped by their experience or background. The concept is historically linked to Jewish , Armenian and Kurdish populations dispersed worldwide with limited access to a place of origin and often accompanied by an idealised collective memory about the ancestral homeland or at least the ancestral experience, a sense of kinship and robust group consciousness. When a person migrates back to an ancestral homeland, they are often assumed to identify via a diaspora group. What, then, can explain those who don’t come from diasporas, including myself and some others I interviewed?

To avoid the sometimes negative or pejorative connotations she found in the terms ‘ethnic return migration’, ‘diasporic return’, or other academic terms, Yamashiro conceptualised ancestral homeland migration – the movement of global co-ethnics to their ancestral homeland regardless of their identification with it. While it describes Japanese American migrants from her research, the idea has universal implications.

‘My concept of ancestral homeland migration starts from a more neutral place. There’s an ancestral connection, and this person is raised, often even born, outside of this ancestral homeland. They’re migrating to this place where they have this ancestral connection. Now, let’s start there and see what else there is. I don’t want to make assumptions about individuals or groups other than starting with some empirical facts,’ Yamashiro explained to me.

People often expect the ancestral homeland to complete missing pieces of their identity. I know I did

From her observations, Japanese American migrants in Tokyo are often perceived as ‘returning’, masking the underlying complexities. People of Japanese ancestry developed different communities, identities and forms of culture worldwide, including between the mainland US and Hawaii, where ‘Japanese’ takes on different meanings: in Hawaii – where Japan has a mainstream association – they enjoy a higher status, while in the mainland US they contend with lower social positions, minority status and racism, which are similarly reflected in their experiences in Japan.

Yamashiro says those offshoots are part of a global ancestral group , her term for a population with shared ancestral ties that has dispersed across multiple societies and nation-states, including people both oriented and not oriented toward the ancestral homeland, with diaspora and non-diaspora experiences, who are historically and culturally linked despite diverse histories and local identities. Since ‘Japanese’ varies in meaning from place to place, Yamashiro’s term is not meant to be homogeneous but rather one that encapsulates these variations while recognising their common ancestral link. Global ancestral groups are composed of branches, with the ancestral homeland as one of many, decentring it as the ‘contemporary cultural centre’ while still recognising its critical role. ‘If the ancestral homeland is seen as the authentic cultural centre, then populations outside of it will always be seen as inauthentic, lacking, and diluted,’ writes Yamashiro.

People often migrate expecting the ancestral homeland to complete missing pieces of their identity. I know I did. Perhaps what is most remarkable about Yamashiro’s research, which I and others experienced, is the discovery that the ancestral homeland is not always the arbiter of culture, nor is it always the vessel to replenish what we think we may be missing. Many of her interviewees learned to ‘feel less Japanese’ due to their language abilities and reduced cultural fluency. Their migration did not always reaffirm identity as expected.

Despite being born and raised in San Diego, Kevin, a young man from her research, is perceived as foreign by Americans due to his East Asian appearance. To Yamashiro, he recalled a serendipitous moment of sitting on a train and blending in with other passengers. Eventually, however, he found his lack of language fluency, body language and use of chopsticks set him apart. Similarly, since Japanese Americans experience racial discrimination in the continental US, moving to the ancestral homeland is an attempt to find a place where they can blend. Yet those of hāfu or mixed ancestry also reported it was difficult for the Japanese to acknowledge their shared ties.

‘Experiences in the United States and expectations before going to the ancestral homeland shape experiences in the homeland because they highlight things they’re not expecting,’ Yamashiro told me. ‘So regarding phenotype, when people look different from the majority in the United States and expect to go to Japan and fit in, it stands out to them how they’re not accepted. Then, they must negotiate that and realise they need to learn the language to fit in better. They need to think about how they dress, their body language, and other things that we’re not usually thinking about when we think about romantic ideas of the ancestral homeland where all people of our ancestry will be accepted.’

Yamashiro’s interviewees came to redefine Japaneseness as ‘a form … which does not fully include them’. Instead, they constructed true transnational identities – a better understanding of contemporary Japanese society while remaining connected to their American cultural framework and embodiment.

D oes our mere blood make us something? Does mine make me German? Does James’s blood make him Slovak, or is there more to this equation?

Stephen Cho Suh, an assistant professor of Asian American studies at San Diego State University, examined Yamashiro’s approach in a paper discussing his own 2010-19 study. In that work, Suh conducted 57 in-depth interviews with Korean American ‘returnees’, mostly people who had lived in South Korea for a median stay of five years. The study tapped what scholar Ji-Yeon O Jo calls ‘imagined affective connection’ in her book Homing: An Affective Topography of Ethnic Korean Return Migration ( 2017 ) , which investigates the experiences and degrees of belonging of legacy migrants – later-generation diaspora Koreans who ‘return’ to South Korea with no first-hand experience, possessing only inherited memories, stories, pictures, and family traditions and community, or knowledge gained through media. How much of that connection was actual, and how much of it had been imagined, created in their minds alone?

After doing the interviews, Suh realised the migrants, who may not explicitly articulate being a member of a larger diaspora, envisioned their migration as a return to the ancestral centre despite being cultural foreigners. He identifies three categories of orientation:

• Bio-explicit individuals who ‘(re)connect with a strictly primordial or biologised rendition of Korean ethnicity as one of their primary motivating factors for migrating’, confident that they shared indisputable ‘blood’ ties with local South Korean people.
• Those with a culture-explicit ‘return’ orientation, who reaffirm their ties to an abstracted Korean culture perceived via secondary sources. ‘Korea was thus simply an ideation for most respondents; an amalgamation of anecdotes, ideas, and memories that brought about feelings of positive affect such as nostalgia and comfort,’ writes Suh.
• Finally, Suh refers to those with ambivalent orientations, who migrated not because of perceived biological or cultural ties but by other connections. Still, they possessed and articulated an imagined affective connection with South Korea.

His findings reveal that identities shifted as time went on. Most considered South Korea ‘the arbiter of Korean-ness’ and viewed their migration as a meaningful way to reconnect with their Korean ‘roots’ and relatives or reaffirm culture. Still, their returns were, as Suh put it, ‘far from idyllic’. They lacked recognition as full members of South Korean civil society and ‘national polity’. They faced significant structural and cultural barriers in workplaces, public spaces, and within extended family, producing ‘identity dissonance’ – reality clashing with their upbringings and expectations, causing them to question long-held notions. One second-generation Korean American, Sam, actively avoided identifying as Korean post-migration, saying ‘Korean American’ instead.

‘Korean Americans, especially those raised in the US, have very different experiences, identities, and world views from those raised in Korea,’ Suh told me. ‘Legally, they’re also not South Korean in most cases … they’re Korean by name only … and so politically and culturally, they quickly realise there’s more to being Korean than simply being of shared ancestry. They begin to see themselves as either American or Korean American. That term, for many of these individuals before migration, is fraught with a kind of ambivalence because most Asians in the context of the US will refer to themselves by their ethnicity, nationality, or race: Korean or Asian. For the first time, they are the gatekeepers to Americanness within the context of Korea, more so perhaps than other American expats. We begin to see the kind of renegotiation of what it means to be American within the context of South Korea, ironically.’

I n 1954, the Canadian anthropologist Kalervo Oberg first presented culture shock : a model of cultural adjustment, still prevalent today. In it, the migrant wafts into a honeymoon experience where the new country’s sights, sounds and food enchant them. Then, ‘negotiation’, a phase where the suspended interregnum of place and identity causes reality to clamp down and cultural barriers to arise, is described well by the Spanish language term zozobra , an anxious inability to be at home in the world. Its meaning is universal. Picture yourself standing on a paddle board in choppy water where your feet wobble beneath you as you struggle not to capsize. An ‘[incessant oscillation] between two possibilities, between two effects, without knowing which one to depend on … in this to and fro the soul suffers, it feels torn and wounded,’ per the philosopher Emilio Uranga . This phase also produces demoralisation, a psycho-spiritual crisis associated with the breakdown of one’s cognitive map, where the assumptions that grounded you before lose all credibility, leaving you utterly confused.

During a Hatsuhinode New Year’s ritual in Japan in 2019, German man dropped to one knee with glistening eyes and asked me to be his wife. Saying yes birthed a palpable tornness since Germany would become my country indefinitely, and I’d been struggling to integrate, despite the perception that, due to blood ties and my name, I could belong. In the months following our engagement, my intensive language course in Munich and its stiff wood chairs became a dreaded chore. COVID-19’s ravenous descent ground life into a quarantined, stagnant pressure cooker, adding a topsy-turvy macro backdrop to my existing confusion. As European borders shuttered, an ever-growing precipice between our personalities emerged, and by September 2021, after the second mandated COVID-19 lockdown, the relationship was done. My only anchor in Germany sunk, I found myself a remote vessel bobbing in unsettled waters.

In the beginning of that period, I lay on the cold bathroom floor of my new flat, drawing deep slow breaths to stave off anxiety. Anxious to build more community in my new aloneness, I reached out to other expats. Although welcome company, they could not understand the purgatory of my experience in an ancestral place because they lacked deeper ties to Germany. Similar to Yamashiro’s and Suh’s interviewees, these experiences further enhanced my foreignness to the point that I contemplated shedding ‘Buchleitner’ for another non-German identifier.

Despite recent global migration headlines, according to the 2022 United Nations World Migration Report, most people continue to live in their birth countries – one in 30 are migrants. As of 2020, around 3.6 per cent of the global population, 281 million international migrants, were on the move. Europe is currently the largest destination, with 87 million , followed by 86 million in Asia. How many of them have the privilege to voluntarily return to an ancestral homeland? Locating data on ancestral homeland migrants is challenging because it does not fit more specific categories of tracked migration by governments and NGOs examining refugees, internally displaced persons, remittances, or return migrants. More than 50 countries offer pathways to citizenship by descent, with 25 inside the European Economic Area offering EU citizenship to grandchildren, great-grandchildren or distant descendants of European citizens. I consulted Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, to uncover data on ancestral citizenships requested in the EU, which could signal an intention to migrate to an ancestral homeland. A spokesperson told me no specific data on citizenship through ancestry for non-EU nationals is available.

Often referred to as ‘Global North’ or lifestyle migrants , Americans and other relatively affluent individuals are moving primarily for quality of life – for instance, starting anew, or achieving goals. This contrasts with economic refugees, fleeing persecution, the climate crisis, gang violence, and war. I, my interviewees, and those in Suh’s and Yamashiro’s studies are somewhat privileged in our migration because we could pull the plug on our experiences if they become too much to bear.

The ancestral homeland shakes us, deconstructs us, and cracks us open, ushering in new resilience

‘Relatively well-off citizens of North America and Western Europe are often assumed to have the privilege and options to relocate elsewhere, typically “voluntarily” and for a mix of economic or social/cultural/lifestyle reasons, as opposed to being “pushed” out by factors like war, revolution, or violence,’ and thus are not ‘fully considered as part of an identifiable “emigration flow”’ in social research, Helen Marrow of Tufts University explained in a brief prepared for me. Marrow and Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels of the University of Kent have conducted two surveys on such groups, but say a much deeper dive is called for in years to come.

One question lingering for me is whether ancestral homeland migration is powered by inherited recollections. Could my own 2009 premonition have come from my genetics? Biological experiments reveal that lifetime events or environmental factors can change DNA expression without changing the DNA sequence via the epigenome – chemical compounds and proteins that attach to and ‘mark’ DNA by telling it what to do, controlling the production of proteins in particular cells, enabling an organism to adapt.

But the experts don’t feel that holds much weight when it comes to episodic memory in humans. Recent findings apply to simple organisms, as evidenced in a study published in Nature Neuroscience in 2013 where mice passed a scent aversion to their descendants, and the 2016 discovery , from Oded Rechavi’s Lab, that acquired traits in Caenorhabditis elegans worms can be inherited beyond DNA via small RNA molecules that tune survival at certain temperatures, or resistance to certain pathogens. But while you can transmit general tendencies such as hypersensitivity to a toxin, Rechavi told me in an interview, ‘we would not remember a book just because our parents read it. We don’t have a mechanism to transmit specific elaborate memories about arbitrary things we experience in our lives.’

Instead, Rechavi suggests that cultural memory, similar to the imagined affective connection mentioned in Jo’s book and Suh’s study, can be more influential than biology. It is the stories of our heritage, passed down through the generations, that can colour our experiences, creating a ‘mystique’.

Perhaps all the floods, triumphs, plagues, droughts, and manmade borders drawn by power-shuffled empires through the centuries my ancestors survived echo in my migration experience during the COVID-19 crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As I write, half of my things are in Germany and the other half in the US; a metaphor for who I am – an American migrant in their homeland. I and the others moved seeking to connect our fragmented pieces, our hands outstretched, begging to be nourished with who we are. Instead, the ancestral homeland shakes us, deconstructs us, and cracks us open, ushering in new resilience and perspective.

In the apartment that became my refuge, a nest, I write my final chapter of Germany in real time: the story of a solo woman abroad in her lineage country, who emerged to embody the community by cofounding a 3,900-member advocacy group for other skilled migrants, leading collaborations with policymakers, including Munich’s migration advisory council (Migrationsbeirat). My resolve is now airtight, but my perception of our identities as transnational mosaics is forever fluid.

The author received funding from an International Center for Journalists 2023 News Corp Media Fellowship, which made possible the reporting in this essay.

Economic history

Credit card nation

Americans have always borrowed, but how exactly did their lives become so entangled with the power of plastic cards?

Sean H Vanatta

Human rights and justice

My elusive pain

The lives of North Africans in France are shaped by a harrowing struggle to belong, marked by postcolonial trauma

Farah Abdessamad

Neuroscience

How to make a map of smell

We can split light by a prism, sounds by tones, but surely the world of odour is too complex and personal? Strangely, no

Jason Castro

Conscientious unbelievers

How, a century ago, radical freethinkers quietly and persistently subverted Scotland’s Christian establishment

Felicity Loughlin

History of technology

Why America fell for guns

The US today has extraordinary levels of gun ownership. But to see this as a venerable tradition is to misread history

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The therapist who hated me

Going to a child psychoanalyst four times a week for three years was bad enough. Reading what she wrote about me was worse

Michael Bacon

Is essay writing service legal?

Essay writing services are legal if the company has passed a number of necessary checks and is licensed. This area is well developed and regularly monitored by serious services. If a private person offers you his help for a monetary reward, then we would recommend you to refuse his offer. A reliable essay writing service will always include terms of service on their website. The terms of use describe the clauses that customers must agree to before using a product or service. The best online essay services have large groups of authors with diverse backgrounds. They can complete any type of homework or coursework, regardless of field of study, complexity, and urgency.

When you contact the company Essayswriting, the support service immediately explains the terms of cooperation to you. You can control the work of writers at all levels, so you don't have to worry about the result. To be sure of the correctness of the choice, the site contains reviews from those people who have already used the services.

Finished Papers

Fill up the form and submit

On the order page of our write essay service website, you will be given a form that includes requirements. You will have to fill it up and submit.

Viola V. Madsen

Why choose us

Our writers always follow the customers' requirements very carefully

• Exploratory

1(888)499-5521

1(888)814-4206

Customer Reviews

Gombos Zoran

Customer Reviews

Finished Papers

• Math Problem
• Movie Review
• Personal Statement
• PowerPoint Presentation plain
• PowerPoint Presentation with Speaker Notes
• Proofreading

Essay Service Features That Matter

Customer Reviews

Customer Reviews

What is a good essay writing service?

Oddly enough, but many people still have not come across a quality service. A large number of users fall for deceivers who take their money without doing their job. And some still fulfill the agreements, but very badly.

A good essay writing service should first of all provide guarantees:

• confidentiality of personal information;
• for the terms of work;
• for the timely transfer of the text to the customer;
• for the previously agreed amount of money.

The company must have a polite support service that will competently advise the client, answer all questions and support until the end of the cooperation. Also, the team must get out of conflict situations correctly.

It is necessary to have several payment methods on the site to make it easier for the client to transfer money.

And of course, only highly qualified writers with a philological education should be present in the team, who will not make spelling and punctuation errors in the text, checking all the information and not stealing it from extraneous sites.

Bennie Hawra

Reset password

Email not found.

• Password reminder
• Registration

Sharing Educational Goals

Our cheap essay service is a helping hand for those who want to reach academic success and have the perfect 4.0 GPA. Whatever kind of help you need, we will give it to you.

Finished Papers

Total Price

1(888)499-5521

1(888)814-4206

Alexander Freeman