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Reference

Smith, F. & Le Grice, J. (2024). “You just got to own it”: Māori girls un/doing settler colonial sexuality in Aotearoa, in Callander, D., Farvid, P., Baradaran, A., Vance. T. (Eds). Sexual Racism and Social Justice: Reckoning with White Supremacy and Desire. London: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000376-008

“You just got to own it”: Māori girls un/doing settler colonial sexuality in Aotearoa

Abstract

Exploring sexuality can be full of possibility and pleasure. Sexuality, however, can also be a site where gendered and racialized discourses coalesce in nuanced and complex ways, informed by unique sociocultural contexts. This chapter explores how Māori (Indigenous) girls in rural northland of Aotearoa (New Zealand), develop their sexual subjectivities in sociocultural context. Using a kaupapa Māori methodology led by Māori researchers with connections to these communities, thirty young people (twelve boys and eighteen girls) were interviewed. The results outline contextual tensions evident in Māori girl’s narratives, informed by a settler-colonial context that has marginalized Māori culture. Māori girls articulated a range of social pressures intersected by racism, (hetero)sexuality, misogyny, and religious conservatism. Some Māori girls sought ways to resist this constitutive sociocultural context by drawing on Māori ways of knowing and being to seek out opportunities for social and interpersonal redress and healing, for themselves and their communities.