Originally Posted by kiwi33

This is an interesting thread.

One important thing for me is my whanau (my kinship group or big family). Your whanau is not just your parents and any siblings you may have. It includes uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, grandparents and so on.

I am a 6th generation member of both (mother and father) sides of my whanau. It is now 8th generation thanks to some of my nieces and nephews and their partners.

The importance of your whanau can be explained by some ideas from evolutionary biology like kin selection and reciprocal altruism.