Clive Aspin: Exploring Takatapui Identity within the Maori Community: Implications for Health and Well-Being

Dr. Clive Aspin wrote, "Exploring Takatapui Identity Within the Maori Community:  Implications for Health and Well-Being."  The Menzies Center for Health Policy describes Dr. Aspin as having "an extensive background in Maori and indigenous public health research. His research has focused on issues related to the Maori health and disability workforce, as well as indigenous sexuality and the resilience of indigenous communities. He also has a strong research interest in the impact that HIV has had on indigenous communities."  

Menzies further describes Dr. Aspin as, the "lead investigator on a collaborative project with teams in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, investigating the impact of STIs (sexually transmitted infections) and BBVs on indigenous communities in the three countries."  In this sense, Dr. Aspin is not just an academic philosopher, but someone actively working within the community he writes about with an impressive list of publications.

Dr. Aspin's chapter can be broken down into three main parts:

• Historical Understandings of Maori Sexuality, 
• Takatapui Identity, and
• Stigma, Discrimination and Marginalization.  

Dr. Aspin introduced the notion that indigenous sexual expression has survived colonization and marginalization.  To support this, he explains that sexual diversity was traditionally embraced and celebrated by Maori society before the arrival of religious missionaries to Aotearoa/New Zealand.  Upon the arrival of the missionaries, Maori Society began to experience limitations on sexual expression.  Recognizing the previous acceptance and the later limitation on sexual expression, he states, "These two opposing views on sexuality at the interface of colonization illustrate this most intimate part of human behavior, a legacy that informs our understanding of sexuality today."

Historical Understandings of Maori Sexuality
Dr. Aspin explains that certain people tried to "reshape" Maori society in a manner that was more consistent with colonial forces and sought to accomplish this by "disrupting" Maori sexuality.  This disruption was sought by elevating marital sex above all other forms of sexuality while re-framing other types of sexuality as perverse.  The underlying theme was that marital sex was heterosexual.

In more recent times, the Maori Sexuality Project "data confirms that sexual diversity has been an essential component of Maori society in the past and that this diversity continues into Maori society today."  Such data has helped Maori to better understand that the contemporary sexuality and sexual expressions of New Zealand's Native LGBT community are "not vastly different from those of [their] ancestors."

Takatapui Identity
In simple terms, Dr. Aspin  defines Takatapui as, “an intimate companion of the same sex.” In his discussion of the term, he emphasizes the importance of the term Takatapui as illustrative of the fact that traditional "sexual relationships among [Maori] ancestors were vastly different from those that are sanctioned by modern-day institutions."  He also explains that contemporaneously, Maori men and women are opting for this more traditional sexual identity rather than western labels.    

Unfortunately, Dr. Aspin's discussion of Takatapui is scant (3 paragraphs) when compared to Driskill, et al's discussion of two-spirit identity in the book's introduction.  He Hoaka, a Maori blog however goes into more detail about the term while also citing to a 2005 Aspin publication.  

"Researchers on the Māori Sexuality Project report they are finding evidence that takatāpui have and do "play a key role in their whanau, hapu and iwi" (Aspin, 2005, p 5). Recent research on men found that those who identified as takatāpui indicated "a strong attachment to their Māori cultural networks" (Aspin, 2005, p 8)."

Wikipedia also has a page dedicated to takatapui.  

Stigma, Discrimination, and Marginalization
Dr. Aspin summarized this section concisely when he wrote, "Demonizing people based on their sexuality, [criminalizing] measures . . . give[s] a strong signal to the wider community that it is fair and reasonable to discriminate against people because of their sexuality."  As a health care professional, he explains the the impact of this stigma, discrimination, and marginalization has on individual health and well-being.  


Dr. Aspin concludes that the Takatapui identity has helped the native LGBT community to overcome some of these challenges.  In the He Hoaka blog post cited above, the blogger explains (while also citing to Aspin) "men who identify as takatāpui tend to maintain strong relationships with their whānau, and this means they are more immune to ostracism than those who are less connected."