Hinemoa

Abstract

SUMMARY This is a retelling of the famous Maori legend, the romance of Hinemoa and Tutanekai. In this version, with an introductory text, the writer challenges the Victorian record, and subverts the contemporary story. She presents an alternate narrative.

“You’re the One That Was on Uncle’s Wall!”: Identity, Whanaungatanga and Connection for Takatāpui (LGBTQ+ Māori)

“…This is because, as opposed to a multiplicity of characters within a uniform world, there is a plurality of consciousnesses located in diverse worlds (Mika 2015). Takatāpui young people such as Waimirirangi embolden us to traverse the dangerous night waters of an assumed tribal 'tradition', the narrow constraints placed on identity and heterosexist and cissexist orthodoxy (Te Awekotuku 2001). Cultural practices such as whanaungatanga are not fixed or reducible to a single place or moment in time, but instead are informed by the past, present and future.…”

“…This differs greatly from how the story was retold in George J. Grey's-a colonial administrator-anthropological text Polynesian Mythology, first published in 1855 and adapted from the manuscripts of Wīremu Maihi Te Rangikāheke (Te Awekotuku 2001). The legend of Hinemoa and T ūtanekai is one of the greatest love stories of the thermal regions of Aotearoa New Zealand and of the Māori world (as above).…”

“…Takatāpui as a term was separately (re)claimed in the 1980s by two Māori academics, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku and Lee Smith, within the manuscripts of Wīremu Maihi Te Rangikāheke (Kerekere 2017). In these manuscripts, Te Rangikāheke describes Te Arawa ancestors Hinemoa, T ūtanekai and Tiki, and the erotic possibilities that existed between them (Te Awekotuku 2001. In this account, Tiki is referred to as the hoa takatāpui (intimate companion) of T ūtanekai, someone for whom T ūtanekai felt immense love.…”

“…It is George J. Grey's version that still pervades today, and Wīremu Maihi Te Rangikāheke's that is silenced and forgotten-even to ourselves. Ngahuia Te Awekotuku describes how she wept as she-a Te Arawa woman, a prominent takatāpui activist and an academic-interpreted and understood the words of her ancestor in a university library where the manuscript was (with)held (Te Awekotuku 2001). Drawing on the richly nuanced story of these Te Arawa ancestors, Te Awekotuku and Smith reclaimed and regifted the term takatāpui across Māori LGBTIQ+ networks where it began to grow in circulation and power across the 1990s and 2000s (Kerekere 2017).…”

Emerging Dimensions in the Conceptualization of Gender, Sex and Sexuality: A Theoretical Review

“…Trans* (with an asterisk) is shorthand for numerous gender minorities, for example, transsexual, transvestite, cross-dresser, genderqueer, nonbinary, gender fluid, agender, non-gendered, third gender, trans woman, trans man, drag king and drag queen, to name a few. Non-western non-heteronormative gender categories, for example those in the Pacific, do not necessarily align with western understandings of transgender (Besnier and Alexeyeff, 2014;Hutchings and Aspin, 2007;Schmidt, 2010;Stratford and Langridge, 2012;Te Awekotuku, 2001).…”