Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku

Loading the player...

Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku, MNZM

Te Arawa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Waikato

Professor Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku is an anthropologist and art historian at the University of Waikato. She was active in the 'second-wave' of feminism in the 1970s and was one of the first to articulate the intersections between feminism, Māori sovereignty issues and gay and lesbian rights. 

As an openly lesbian academic, she was denied entry to the United States in 1972 on the grounds that she was homosexual. She returned to the United States in 1994 to represent Aotearoa New Zealand at the "Stonewall 25" celebrations and international gay and lesbian human rights conference in New York.

In this excerpt from a radio interview recorded then, she talks about the impact colonialism has had on the tradition of same-sex relationships which once existed across the Pacific, and her concerns for young homosexual people living in small towns.

Find out more about Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku: 

Read about Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku on NZHistory.net.

See the Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku entry on Wikipedia.

Image: Professor Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku (Photo: Courtesy of Government House).