Queer Icon - Ngaahuia Te Awekootuku

This is a part of a series for Pride Month, which profiles queer icons throughout Aotearoa history. 

Emeritus Professor Ngaahuia Te Awekootuku was born in Rotorua, she is of Te Arawa, Tuuhoe, and Waikato. She was raised under the surnames Loffley and Later Gorden, before receiving the name Te Awakootuku by her mother’s whanau after she completed her MA in 1974. Educated in Rotorua, Wellington, Auckland, Waikato and Hawai’i, she earned degrees in English and psychology, with her doctoral research examining the cultural impacts of tourism on Te Arawa. A prolific scholar and writer, she has published fiction, influential work on Maaori research ethics, and ethics, and the award-winning Mau Moko: The World of Maaori Tattoo. Her career has included roles as curator, lecturer, and professor across major New Zealand universities, with research spanning indigenous methodologies, gender and sexuality, body modification, art, death studies, and heritage issues. She has held significant national and international leadership positions in arts, culture, and intellectual property, and was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in in 2010.

Ngaahuia is a known activist in the Women’s and gay Liberation movements. Her biography traces Ngaahuia Te Awekootuku through her early life, and the forces that shaped her into a groundbreaking Maaori scholar, activist, and the first women to receive an Emeritus title at the University of Waikato. Her memoir explores the realities of her childhood in mid-century Aotearoa, exploring the intersectional issues between her whakapapa and her adoptive whanau, as well as socio-environmental pressures of being whaaine Maaori and queer. The follows her through adolescence marked by exploitation disguised as glamour, low expectations despite academic promise, and the hostility she faced entering university as a young Maaori woman. The book charts her political awakening, her embrace of feminist and lesbian activism, her rejection of academic gatekeeping, and her involvement in movements from Vietnam War protests to Ngaa Tamatoa.