by Basil Penwarden (they/ia)
Ko Nukutaimemeha rāua ko Tākitimu tōku waka,
Ko Mauao tōku maunga, Ko Tauranga Moana tōku moana, Ko Ngāti Porou tōku iwi, Nō Uawa ahau,
Ko Tuhiwai rāua ko Penwarden tōku whānau,
Ko Basil ahau.
My place in the world has always been one of struggle. It has always been a fight of definition, of an argument, of a reason I deserve to exist. And I’m sure this is a common experience for many queer individuals reading this: it is hard to exist in a space that was not made for you. Heoi anō, we have made a space to call our own. We have created community, celebration, pride. There is space for us as the LGBTQIA+ community to celebrate our nonconformity together.
And yet.
Somehow, even with this beautiful community at my back, I still feel like a part is missing from who I truly am. I knew I was queer from an early age. By thirteen, I knew what I wanted, and I quickly learnt the necessities of knowing how to argue well; coming out meant knowing how to defend myself with big words and bigger ideas, logical fallacies were destroyed at my feet. I’m sure my mother got sick of me quickly, her social justice warrior child. I grew up with big ideas on what I wanted the world to look like, the equality I wanted to see in my local communities. Queerness has defined me for most of my life, but for the longest time I hadn’t thought to consider where being Māori fit into that.
A quick note on deadbeat dads: mine never wanted anything to do with my life, frequently attempted to get out of paying child support, and has a new family over the ditch. I doubt he has cared about his own heritage even once. He has left my latest email on delivered for the last year, and my only real information about his life comes from being friends with his wife on Facebook. I learnt everything I know about our tūpuna from his sister.
My isolation from my Māori heritage always frustrated me. Mum didn’t care to know (“He wants nothing to do with you! I’m raising you, so it should be this side that matters to you. Sorry we’re not interesting enough.”). I was separated through time and space to find out from my Dad’s side of the family (rest in peace Nana Fran), so I often believed I would always be missing a part of myself, forever lost and unretrievable. My queerness became my safety net, a forged identity in absence of my whakapapa. However, that can only get you so far.
The knowledge has come slowly. I have surrounded myself with opportunities to learn about my heritage, about queerness, and I am redefining at my own pace how these intersect for me. Sometimes I believe I will never fully know who I am, disconnected from my reo, my whenua, my hapū, my iwi. But often I am reminded that many of us are. Many of us are city Māori away from our iwi, colonised and missing parts of ourselves that can only be healed through time and tremendous effort as a community. Reconnecting with pūtaiao and mātauranga in ways that serve us now, as a 21st century Māori society.
Thinking this way, becoming more familiar with the knowledge of my tūpuna, I stumbled across the term takatāpui just a couple years ago. I can’t fully describe in words what it felt like, but as my gift to you, dear readers (I’ve been watching too much Bridgerton lately sorry not sorry), I will try. It’s like when the ringing in your ears finally dissipates. I had carved a space for myself over and over, feeling uncomfortable and alone every time I tried—only to carve into an opening full of waiting arms, ready to embrace me just as I am. I discovered a space that had been ready and waiting for me to return for a long time. My understanding of myself had been stolen from me, I had been alienated from a historical truth; people like me had always existed. Queer Māori people had always existed, and they had been welcomed, celebrated. What I was missing in the LGBTQIA+ community I had found here: a cultural understanding of queerness. Takatāpui.
The most important part about this discovery for me was the inherentness of takatāpui as an identity. There was no one strict definition under takatāpui, just an inherent understanding of queerness in conjunction with Māoriness. Somewhere where the two were inextricably linked; both were necessary and could not survive without the other in the definition of being. Now when I think of my body, I am less inclined to think about gender. I am drawn to the koha nature that is my connection to Papatūānuku, that I bleed once a month is not a symbol of dysphoria but one of whakapapa and connection. I think of Porourangi, of Hingangaroa and Iranui, of Matengauroa, my great-grandmother. I am not ‘girl’ or ‘woman’, but takatāpui, ia. I am everything that came before me and everything that will come after, in a line of always-has-been of whakapapa. When I talk about my queerness without cultural understanding, I feel like a part of me is missing, that my words lack the nuance they should carry. I speak with the weight of implications that aren’t understood. I am not nonbinary in the sense I am not man or woman, I am takatāpui in the way that I have come from the whenua and my whakapapa.
The decolonisation of my own queerness has made me feel infinitely more comfortable taking up the space that was always rightfully mine. It is easy to feel outcast in a society that doesn’t want you, easy to feel invisible and shunned. But as takatāpui, I know that I have always been part of Te Ao Māori, others like me have always existed, and the space we have carved always belonged to us. Instead of feeling like a burden pushing to take up space, I am reclaiming and inviting others to do the same.
Instead of carving for our space to exist, let us carve to decorate. Let our whakairo be ātaahua, let our found whānau be welcoming and bright, in a space not only made to be functional, but to be celebrated. We are not just queer, not just Māori, but both.