Gay maori

It was only when Tutānekai sent a servant to get him some water from the pool that she saw her chance.

Deepening her voice in an attempt to sound like a man, she asked ‘For whom is this water?’ The servant replied that it was for Tutānekai, and Hinemoa took the gourd, drank the water, and broke it. It was my fear of what I’d seen when I was growing up.

Takatāpui behaviour was hidden and takatāpui stories were erased, deliberately not translated or recorded. While Mana Wāhine Māori: Selected Writings in Māori Women’s Art, Culture, and Politics did use it first, the Herewini and Sheridan paper is governmental, so is seen as more official.

From its beginning, the word's definition has been rather vague and differs from source to source.

Such as bring a boyfriend home, you know, greet the whānau... Hinemoa did the same thing she had the last time. While sometimes labeling things and putting everything into their own box can be helpful, it’s worth discussing how the different aspects of ourselves connect with one another.

[Disclaimer: Some of the sources may contain triggering material.]

“Hinemoa and Tutanekai – Love Story.” Māori in Tourism Rotorua, TangataWhenua.com, nzmaoritourism.com/hinemoa-and-tutanekai-love-story/.

Kamm, Rebecca.

I remember my older cousin saying, “get outside and clean the hangi pit”. However, a governmental paper by Herewini and Sheridan in a discussion of the health of Māori gay men is most often considered the word's first use. At this very moment, as people continue to learn more about these words and this culture, they are allowed to reconnect to their community or identity.

Very angry. The term has been reclaimed for all Māori who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, whakawāhine, fa’afafine, same-sex attracted, asexual, queer and questioning.”

There is an even more thorough definition from Elizabeth Kerekere:

“Takatāpui is an umbrella term that embraces all Māori with diverse gender identities, sexualities and sex characteristics including whakawāhine, tangata ira tāne, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer.

In this text, the definition is noted as "intimate companion of the same sex".

The most popular example of the term takatāpui in Māori history involves the popular (heterosexual) love story of Hinemoa and Tūtānekai.

In the early 2000s, scholars discovered that one of the classic and earliest accounts of Māori beliefs (Nga Tama a Rangi by Wī Maihi Te Rangaikāheke, 1849), recounted Tūtānekai referring to his best friend Tiki as 'hoa takatāpui'.

And it benefits the coloniser”

“I know people that have taken the same path as me, but their families have rejected them. But my love for her was always gonna beat that one”

“I never thought it was a gender thing because she never really displayed any clear signs – and that’s why it was a ‘hit by a train’ kind of thing”

“There’s a little bit of ‘what will everyone else think of me and what will they think of our family’?”

“I was a patched gang member.

When he first came out, my first comment was ’no comment.’ I was still trying to deal with it. Eventually, she was able to make it to the island. And I truly believe it was through…dying inside…he was not nourished. That was my biggest fear. Her tribe had discovered her intentions and had pulled all the canoes high up on shore. The term was reclaimed in the 1980s and used by individuals who were gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex or part of the rainbow community.
The use of 'takatāpui' as an identity is a response to western ideas of sex, sexuality and gender, and emphasises one’s identity as Māori as inextricably linked to their gender identity, sexuality or variation of sex characteristics.
Where does 'takatāpui' come from?
Important to the notion that practices other than heterosexuality and being cisgender were accepted in traditional Māori society pre-colonisation, is the existence of the word takatāpui in one of the earliest Māori dictionaries - The Dictionary of Māori Language - compiled by missionary Herbert Williams in 1832.

For whānau today who often live without traditional Māori views and acceptance of gender and sexual fluidity, views about takatāpui in the whānau can take on the worst of colonial and Western culture: shame, silence and religious persecution.

“I think the Māori prejudice against this kind of behaviour [being takatāpui] comes from that they see it as unnatural.

The term takatāpui is hundreds of years old and has been connected to iwi in Te Arawa and the Wairarapa. This was when Tutānekai, the illegitimate son of a chief from another island, came into the picture.