“I feel like an unofficial ambassador because I tell everyone heaven is here on earth right now.”
That’s how American writer Alok Vaid-Menon described Aotearoa to Te Ao with Moana host, Moana Maniapoto.
Vaid-Menon visited New Zealand for the first time back in 2016.
“Seeing the confluence of Pacific indigenous people in one place, meeting people who are Tongan and Samoan and people from Fiji and Māori, all these people together and learning how people are activating ancestral legacies and articulating their gender and sexuality from that was so foundational to my journey as an Indian person to know that we can do this,” they said.
As a gender non-conforming and transfeminine person meaning they go by they/them pronouns, Vaid-Menon said indigenous people from the Pacific, including Māori, were leading the way around the kōrero about gender and sexuality.
“How can we say that non-binary is new when fa’afafine people exist, you know?
“So indigenous trans folks, especially from the Pacific, are leaders of the world over and showing people there’s nothing new here.
“I feel like my experiences over there have shown me so much kindness.”
Asked by Maniapoto what the “perfect” future would look like, the American author said everyone understanding people were complex.
“So dynamic that we would never make assumptions about who they are because we have to get to know them. As we recognise that people are kind of an ocean of stories just swimming around and we relish in one another’s complexity, we affirm it, and we celebrate it.
“We use language to be poetic and expansive and beautiful, not crude, militaristic, and containing. We create a world that gets excited by innovation and ingenuity. We create a world where artists are our leaders.
“I remember the world making that happens when beauty is our compass. So the world I want in 30 years is one in which beauty is not seen as a luxury but a necessity. A world that doesn’t just want to end violence but create and maintain beauty,” they told Maniapoto.
Watch the full interview about Vaid-Menon’s career, life, and more in the video above.