Understanding takatāpui
Takatāpui is a Māori word that has been reclaimed to embrace those who identify with diverse sexes, genders, and sexualities.
We had the amazing opportunity to sit down and kōrero with Green MP, Dr Elizabeth Kerekere about takatāpui, their belonging in whānau, hapu and iwi, and her own work around this.
What does takatāpui mean?
Takatāpui for me is a word I found when I was a young person, and I was really excited about. Although I had already identified as a lesbian, I embraced it at the time, but it is a Pākehā term, like once you became lesbian or gay you were suddenly no longer Māori and that never sat well with me. So, for me takatāpui then was a word that was like “ah it’s a Māori identity, it talks about my spirituality and my culture being as important as whatever my sexual orientation might be”. When I became aware of the increasing amounts of different types of discrimination faced by different parts of our community, I increasingly began to focus on advocating for takatāpui and that is when I also started getting into research, started making resources, set up a group which is now 20 years this year - all of that to acknowledge where we are now because of colonisation. And so, for me takatāpui is not just an identity, it’s a connection to our ancestors, it’s a connection to our Rainbow communities it’s a real connection to home and to our whānau.
Could you tell us a bit about your research?
I have been involved in different research projects for many years. … when I was asked to do a PhD it was because there was no major research of takatāpui, and definitely not takatāpui in the broad way that we look that encompasses all people of diverse genders, sexualities and sex characteristics. At that stage they had done research papers on gay men which they called takatāpui which is cool, they are totally part of the community, but certainly not all of the community. So, the research I wanted to do was to do with Māori, to trace the emergence of that identity, to really cement it as a Māori identity, that it is for Māori to claim. But also, to say that no matter how Māori you might feel yourself to be or are judged to be based on how well you speak Māori or how much you are connected to your marae and your whānau, that this is still a term that we all could use.
With the research I wanted to look back and look for instances of takatāpui amongst our ancestors, and I wanted to highlight the voices of different takatāpui. I chose people who were leaders in the takatāpui communities that they represented, and a range of different identities because then they could speak not just to their own lived experience, but also a national overview of what was happening in our community.
I have been pleasantly surprised with how many people have come to me and said they’ve read [that research] and said they’ve used it which is really gratifying because it was hard work. I felt a lot of pressure with it. I never felt a part of [the academic world] but I seem to not be able to get away from now, because you write a PhD people think you’re a part of that world, and it’s funny because it was only when I got used to the idea of being considered an academic that I was actually able to move forward to consider myself as a politician. It was actually a part of my growing towards going “I could maybe do that and accept that title”.
When I did my first takatāpui resource, because that was a part of the suicide prevention kaupapa, it kind of met a few needs. One was that we did not have such a resource, no one has proven us wrong that it is the first indigenous Rainbow suicide prevention resource in the world, and now we know there are people around the world who are using it as a base to produce their own resources which is really beautiful, so that was one thing just ‘cause we needed it. The other thing was then to lay claim to my own work so what I did at that point was - because I had pretty much the skeleton of my thesis - I took my thinking up to that stage and I crunched it down to 300 words for each section of my resource and so it was just really getting down to what’s the absolute guts of it. There are many people who have read my thesis now which is amazing, but most people never will so the resource was also a way to get that information into something beautiful - it needed to be beautiful so that people would pick it up and look at it - and for it to be correct.
We’ve since updated it, because this was in 2015. It’s also a way for me to be accountable back to the community. We’ve updated it this year to make sure we include sex characteristics and check the language. I have a group of trans men and women, non-binary and intersex people that check all my work, including my entire thesis. I had three of them read my entire thesis before I submitted and the resource extensively. I wrote a chapter for my next piece of research which will be published soon, and I had 13 different leaders of our community edit it for me. Even though I might be a leader in terms of the takatāpui side of things and indigenous queer stuff, they are the leaders in their areas and I always want to make sure that our language ties together.
Could you tell us about takatāpui and their belonging in whānau, hapu and iwi pre-colonisation?
There’s only been two or three of us have done real solid research into this work. Before me was Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, so she found examples of polyamorous, bisexual imagery and carvings. She found evidence in mōteatea, our ancient songs, and she also found the example that after colonisation our people would change language, so there were things that were hidden. I focused on whakataukī and using those proverbs and sayings of our people to find different ways of how we looked at this.
So there are two kinds of ways that we figure out what it was like pre-colonial times. One of the ways is through Māori narratives, so that’s through mōteatea, and through my research in whakataukī. But the other way is through the European record. We know that the early whalers, sailors, soldiers all wrote diaries. And we know from the missionaries themselves and the puritans that [takatāpui] were there, because they were horrified. They were horrified by our behaviour; we were open about sexuality, they called us vulgar and uncouth because we were open about what we wanted, about our bodies, and so very sex positive. We believed you should be good at sex. One of my very favourite things is in the diary of a sailor who said he had sex with a Māori woman and then she told him he wasn’t any good, and that he should really go and practice, and he was so offended. That’s everything you need to know. We were in a different world to how women behaved and were treated in England, and when they came to us, they were mortified. We know from those same records how easy going we were with having same sex partners, or partners of both genders[1]. The priority was always to do your work, and then whatever you did, whoever you wanted to hang out with didn’t matter.
When I came out to my great-grandmother who was born in 1903, she remembered her aunties living as a couple, and they had to have been born minimum in the 1880s. So, 40 years after the Treaty, many years after colonists and missionaries had been here, and they were quite comfortably, surrounded by family, living as a couple. They said, so long as you have your children, which is your commitment to survival of our people, you do your work, who you share your body with is your own business. In all my work I use the phrase “part of the family” or “part of the whānau” because when I said to my nan, “what did you call them?”, she said “we didn’t have a name for them, they were just part of the whānau”. When people say “we had visibility and we had celebrations for us” – no, that is a thing we have to do now because of the world we live in, but back then we were just ordinary, just normal, just part of the whānau. That also gives me the absolute strength I have to take the stands I do and fight for our people and fight for those memories of how it used to be for us.
The other thing, we had many different types of songs: karanga is one type of song, mōteatea is another which is our chants that would tell big, long stories, oriori which are lullabies - but we had a particular one where we would make fun of someone else –[kaioraora] like derogatory songs. What’s really interesting is that there were no derogatory songs against people who were same sex attracted. There were no derogatory songs about people who might have had some gender fluidity, there was nothing. And this was the key thing, we had no punishment at all. We had punishment for anybody who sexually abused somebody, we absolutely had punishment for that. We had punishment for people who hit their partners or children, we absolutely had punishment for those things. We never ever had punishment for someone who was takatāpui. It’s one of the key things we can show that we were just accepted, we were just normal, not put on a pedestal, just normal.
Check out these awesome resources to find out more about takatāpui
Takatāpui: part of the whānau written by Elizabeth Kerekere, with Tīwhanawhana Trust and The Mental Health Foundation
Growing up takatāpui: whānau journeys written by Elizabeth Kerekere, with Tīwhanawhana Trust and RainbowYOUTH
[1] Both genders meaning wahine and tane (woman and man) in the sense of how they perceived them in pre-colonial time
