Tēnā koe, Elizabeth.
Nau mai.
Te pae tuatahi nō hea koe? (First step - where are you from?)
He mokopuna au o Te Tairāwhiti
Ko Whānau a Kai, ko Ngāti Oneone,
ko Te Aitanga a Mahaki ōku nei iwi.
- So I come from the paradise of Gisborne,
where I live now.
Kia ora.
- As Māori, what have we lost?
What did the spectrum of sexuality
and gender look like before colonisation?
- We lost so much when the attack
on our language and our culture.
The loss of the gender fluidity that we might have had,
and the loss of sex positivity
that still exists in pockets around our country.
I think I come from a place pretty sex positive.
But only recently have different ones of us been taking up,
saying, "Actually, this is as important.
"This is as much of who we are as our language,
"and this is a part of our culture."
- Āe, 'cause this is something
that shapes strength and identity, right?
- Exactly right.
And if we forget where we came from and who we are,
and we place all of this colonial...
the homophobia, the biphobia, the transphobia,
on top of what that is,
then we've completely lost and forgotten
actually who our ancestors were and how they lived.
This was always a Māori thing.
- What was the reaction when you came out to your community?
- I was living in Dunedin with my mother when I came out.
My family were really supportive.
I hitchhiked from Dunedin to come to Gisborne
to tell my great-grandmother, who was born in 1903.
I had to try to explain to her what lesbian meant.
She's never heard that word,
and I had to try and say oh,
I wanted to have a girlfriend.
She goes, "Oh, yes.
"I've got girlfriends."
Okay, no.
To the point where I had to say, actually no,
I'm gonna try and find someone
who's willing to have sex with me.
Don't know who that might be, but they'll be a woman.
And that's when she said to me, "Ah, like my aunties."
My aunties, my distant tūpuna takatāpui
were living as couples inside our whānau,
accepted and loved inside
the whānau.
And when I said to my nan, what word did you call them?
And she goes, "We didn't have a word.
"They're just part of the family.
"They're part of the whānau."
And so that's a really important thing.
I want our kids today, I want all of our people
who identify in whatever gender, sexuality,
or their diverse sex characteristics to just feel normal.
- That all anyone wants.
- Yeah, low bar.
(laughs)
Low bar, but apparently really hard to achieve.
- Yeah, really hard for some of the nosier people out there.
One of the stories in your thesis
is about a young missionary called William Yates
who was sent home for "bad behavior" with young Māori men.
- Many Māori men.
He was a missionary who was over here,
and he got into trouble,
actually got into trouble on the boats
coming over, for his dalliances.
He got taken to court, 'cause of course
the British brought their laws
that said now, this is illegal,
something we had no problem with.
So we pretty much ignored the fact
that they thought it was illegal.
And so when they went to court,
the whānau and even those young men themselves
just did not have a problem with it.
Two things we learned from that:
One, that we didn't have a problem with it,
but two, we had no punishment for it,
and that's how we know that our people, it was accepted,
and it was kind of a bit ordinary.
- And I gathered from some of the things
that I read that actually being good at sex
was something that people took a lot of pride in.
- That's right.
- Because you could practise with different partners
and identify how you wanted,
so then you were like, I'm a bit good at this.
- Yeah, it's a joyful thing when you find a diary entry
of some sailor complaining because a Māori woman
told them they weren't good enough.
(laughs)
- That's amazing.
- Yeah, do some work, mate.
- We don't need any more proof than that.
We knew what we wanted and how to get it.
Did any of these narratives sort of end up
in our raranga (weaving),
our whakairo (carvings), other mahi-ā-ringa (handmade arts),
that we can see, visually?
- Absolutely.
Those stories,
because we're oral traditions.
All our stories were woven, carved, and sung.
You go in any whare
in this country,
there's sex positivity happening on the walls.
Recently I've found on one
of marae at home
is an example of someone
who absolutely appears to be intersex.
The carving very clearly shows that up the top is male,
and at the bottom is female.
Those were the stories.
This is the real life,
and it is preserved for us in wood.
- That is amazing.
- It's fully amazing.
When I found it, I flipped out.
- Awesome korero. I bet!
- Flipped out!
- I bet!
-Yeah, it's a big deal.