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

• He tikanga whakaaro: Research ethics in the Maori community: A discussion paper Ministry of Māori Affairs

On art and artists

• E ngaa uri whakatupu - weaving legacies : Dame Rangimarie Hetet and Diggeress Te Kanawa, Hamilton: Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato, 2015. ISBN 9780473326036
• 'Traditions endure : Five Maori Painters at Auckland Art Gallery', Art New Zealand, Winter 2014, no. 150, pp. 58–61.
• 'A glorious tradition', Art New Zealand, Winter 2003, no.103.
• Unveiling our hidden treasures : the Seventh Pacific Festival of Arts 1996;', Art New Zealand, Summer 1996/1997, no. 81, pp. 42–45,84.
• 'Forgiving, but never forgetting : Shared Visions at the Auckland City Art Gallery', Art New Zealand, Winter 1996, no. 79, pp. 74–77.
• 'He Take Ano: Another Take - Conversations with Lisa Reihana', Art New Zealand, Spring 1993, no. 68, pp. 84–87
• 'Kura Te Waru Rewiri', Art New Zealand, Spring 1993, no. 68, pp. 91–93
• Mana wahine Maori: Selected writings on Maori women's art, culture and politicsAuckland: New Woman Press, 1991. ISBN 0908652631
• 'Art and the spirit', New Zealand Geographic, Jan/Mar 1990, no. 5, pp. 93–97.
• 'Mats of the Pacific', Art New Zealand, Spring 1989, no. 52, pp..88-90
• 'Te whakahoutanga o Te Winika (The restoration of Te Winika)', New Zealand Listener, 28 November 1987, p. 67.
• 'Ngahuia Te Awekotuku in conversation with Elizabeth Eastmond and Priscilla Pitts’, Antic, no. 1, 1986.

On tā moko

• 'Tā Moko: Māori Tattoo', in Goldie, (1997) exhibition catalogue, Auckland: Auckland City Art Gallery and David Bateman, pp. 108–114.
• 'More than Skin Deep', in Barkan, E. and Bush, R. (eds.), Claiming the Stone: Naming the Bones: Cultural Property and the Negotiation of National and Ethnic Identity (2002) Los Angeles: Getty Press, pp. 243–254.
• Ta Moko: Culture, body modification, and the psychology of identity, paper given at the The Proceedings of the National Māori Graduates of Psychology Symposium 2002.
• Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, with Linda Waimarie Nikora, Mohi Rua, your face: wearing Moko – Maori facial marking in today’s world, paper given at Tatau/Tattoo: Embodied art and cultural exchange conference, Victoria University of Wellington, 21–22 August 2003.
• Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, with Linda Waimarie Nikora, Mohi Rua and Rolinda Karapu, Mau moko : the world of Māori tattoo, Auckland: Penguin Books, 2011. ISBN 9780143566854

On death in Maori culture

• Tess Moeke-Maxwell, Linda Waimarie Nikora, and Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, 'Manaakitanga: Ethical research with Māori who are dying', in M. Agee, T. McIntosh, P. Culbertson, & C. Makasiale (eds.), Pacific Identities and Well-Being - Cross Cultural Perspectives, London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 188–203.
• Vincent Malcolm-Buchanan, Lina Waimarie Nikora and Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Cloaked in Life and Death: Korowai, kaitiaki and tangihanga, MAI Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012.
• Tess Moeke-Maxwell, Linda Waimarie Nikora, and Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, 'End-of-life care and Māori whānau resilience', MAI Journal, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 140–152.

Further information

• Interview with Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, 'Nine to Noon programme, RNZ National, 25 June 2013
• Ngahuia Te Awekotuku: Sustaining the art of moko presentation for the Royal Society of New Zealand, June 2014
• Te Awekotuku, Ngahuia. Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture, 2012 page 553.

References