Ngahuia Te Awekotuku

Ngahuia Te Awekotuku MNZM (born 1949) is a New Zealand academic specialising in Māori cultural issues and a lesbian activist.[1]

Biography

Te Awekotuku is descended from Te Arawa, Tūhoe and Waikato iwi.[2]

As a student she was a member of Ngā Tamatoa at the University of Auckland,.[3] Her Master of Arts thesis was on Janet Frame[3] and her PhD on the effects of tourism on the Te Arawa people.[3][4]

Te Awekotuku has worked across the heritage, culture and academic sectors as a curator, lecturer, researcher and activist. Her areas of research interest include gender issues, museums, body modification, power and powerlessness, spirituality and ritual.[5] She has been curator of ethnology at the Waikato Museum; lecturer in art history at Auckland University,[3] and professor of Maori studies at Victoria University of Wellington.[3] She was Professor of Research and Development at Waikato University.[2] She and Marilyn Waring contributed the piece "Foreigners in our own land" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.[6] Although now retired, she continues to write.

In the 2010 New Year Honours Te Awekotuku was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori culture. [7]

Research into tā moko

Te Awekotuku has researched and written extensively on the traditional and contemporary practices of tā moko in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her 2007 (re-published in 2011) book Mau Moko: the world of Maori tattoo, co-authored with Linda Waimarie Nikora, was the product of a five-year long research project conducted by the Māori and Psychology Research Unit at Waikato University, funded by a Marsden Fund grant.[8][9]

Te Awekotuku took a moko kauae (facial moko) to mark the death of Te Arikinui Dame te Atairangikaahu in 2006.[10][11]

Research into the Māori way of death

In 2009 Te Awekotuku and Linda Waimarie Nikora received a $950,000 Marsden Fund grant as lead researchers in the Māori and Psychology Research Unit at Waikato University for the research project 'Apakura: the Maori way of death'. A further $250,000 was received from the Nga Pae o te Maramatanga National Institute of Research Excellence to explore past and present practices around tangihanga.[12]

Visitors permit denial

In 1972, Te Awekotuku was denied a visitors permit to the USA on the grounds that she was a homosexual. Publicity around the incident was a catalyst in the formation of Gay Liberation groups in New Zealand.[13] This may have been related to a TV interview she gave in 1971, in which she described herself as a 'sapphic woman'[14]

Selected publications

On art and artists

On tā moko

On death in Maori culture

Further information

References

  1. ↑ http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/lesbian-lives/page-5
  2. 1 2 http://www.waikato.ac.nz/smpd/about/staff/ngahuia
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/Writers/Profiles/Te-Awekotuku,-Ngahuia.htm
  4. ↑ http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/7389
  5. ↑ "Professor Ngahuia Te Awekotuku". Nga Pae O Te Maramatanga. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  6. ↑ "Table of Contents: Sisterhood is global :". Catalog.vsc.edu. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  7. ↑ "New Year honours list 2010". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 31 December 2009. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  8. ↑ "Mau Moko - The World of Māori tattoo". Waikato University. 5 December 2007. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  9. ↑ Tahana, Yvonne (24 July 2014). "Mau Moko - The World of Māori tattoo". NZ Herald. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  10. ↑ Te Awekotuku, Ngahuia (21 September 2012). "The rise of the Maori tribal tattoo". BBC.com. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  11. ↑ Higgins, Rawinia. "Tā moko – Māori tattooing - Contemporary moko". Te Ara - Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  12. ↑ "Prestigious grant for Waikato Uni research into the Maori way of death". Waikato University. 8 October 2009. Retrieved 25 December 2015.
  13. ↑ http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/homosexual-law-reform/birth-of-the-gay-movement
  14. ↑ http://gaynz.net.nz/history/Part1.html
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