virgodura:

Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku is a radical feminist, academic, lesbian rights activist and advocate for Māori sovereignty. Born in Rotorua of Tuhoe, Waikato and Te Arawa descent, she completed a PhD on the effects of tourism on the Te Arawa people. Before her retirement she held various positions including curator of ethnology at the Waikato Museum and professor of Maori studies at Victoria University of Wellington.

Te Awekotuku is credited with starting the Gay Liberation movement in New Zealand in 1972 after being denied entry to the United States for being a lesbian - or ‘known sexual deviant.’ She was also active in Ngā Tamatoa, the emergent Māori rights group, and a founding member of Auckland University Women’s Liberation Group.

In 1989, with the publication of Tahuri, Te Awekotuku became the first writer in New Zealand to publish lesbian fiction under her own name. Loosely autobiographical stories of a young Māori girl’s growing up and discovery of sexual identity, this collection makes Māori, and especially lesbian, women central and Pakeha peripheral, carrying out what Te Awekotuku has called her ‘responsibility to the fierce women fighters, shamans and poets of Māori legend and myth the resilient courageous women of my own extended family to ensure their stories are not lost in a mawkishly romantic muddle of male translated history’.

(via homoidiotic)