Students learn story of Chinese woman adopted by Indian family through oral history project

SINGAPORE – Until she was nine years old, Madam Pakiam Samiappan did not know she was adopted.

Recalled the 76-year-old: “My parents always told me that I was their daughter. It was when my neighbours in the kampung told me that I learnt I had been adopted.”

She later found out that she had been named Goh Pak Kiah at birth and that her ethnically Chinese biological family gave her to an Indian family when she was young.

It was only years later, when she was 37 – after she had got married and set up her own family – that she reunited with her biological siblings.

Her daughter, armed with only Madam Pakiam’s birth certificate, went to the location of her mother’s old kampung near Adams Road to search for clues about the older woman’s biological family.

There, she had a chance encounter with a woman who had adopted Madam Pakiam’s biological sister and put her in touch with her biological family.

Madam Pakiam’s life growing up as an interracial adoptee and her journey to reunite with her birth family were just some of the stories she shared with a group of three Nanyang Technological University (NTU) communication studies students as part of the Student Archivist Project (SAP).

The oral history project, in which student interviewers collect personal stories from senior interviewees, is jointly organised by the Founders’ Memorial and the National Museum of Singapore, which take turns to run it every alternate year.

The project gives students a better understanding of the past through the experiences of first-hand witnesses, such as members of Pioneer and Merdeka generations, whose sacrifices were honoured by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in his National Day Rally Speech on Aug 17.

In 2024, 155 students from 29 schools participated in the project. Most of them were in Secondary 2 or Secondary 3, and they spent six to seven months finding and interviewing senior citizens.

NTU students who took the Media Presentation and Performance module at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information also participated in the project from March to April 2025.

For their final assignment of the module, part-time lecturer Darren Tan told his students to create a five-minute video documentary about a person born in 1953 or earlier. He wanted their output to be part of the SAP.

He said: “I’ve always believed that students learn best when they are given real-world opportunities with real-world consequences and responsibilities.

“Having the students engage with the National Heritage Board on this project, I believe they have benefited from learning how to handle and deal with a real-world client.”

Said 21-year-old Thoi Min En, whose team interviewed Madam Pakiam: “It was quite difficult for us to find the right profile. Many of the seniors we approached didn’t fit the age criterion or weren’t fluent in English.”

In the end, Ms Thoi and teammates Anastasia Lai Wen Hui, 20, and Teh Xue Hui, 19, found Madam Pakiam through her granddaughter, a fellow NTU communications student and Ms Teh’s close friend.

Beyond working with a tight timeline, “it was also quite a struggle to arrange the shoot because Madam Pakiam’s family were moving during that period”, said Ms Lai.

On learning about Madam Pakiam’s childhood experience studying in a Tamil primary and secondary school, Ms Teh said: “What stood out to me the most was how colour-blind people back then were... No one treated her differently even though she looks different.”

Ms Thoi added: “Madam Pakiam and her friends never questioned the colour of her skin because survival was the main priority for them. The fact that we focus on stuff like that now shows us how privileged we are.”

Mr Patrick Elangovan, 51, Madam Pakiam’s son, said he hopes that younger generations can learn about multiculturalism from his mother’s story. He added: “It’s not about skin colour. At the end of the day, we are all human beings and we should love and respect each other.”

Stories from the founding generation such as Madam Pakiam’s are featured at the ongoing Project Citizens pop-up exhibition. From April 2025 to March 2026, the roving exhibition is being shown at more than 20 locations such as community hubs and libraries.

This initiative is part of

Project Citizens – The First Million

organised by the people behind the Founders’ Memorial, which honours the contributions of the founding generation in Singapore’s nation-building journey.