National Portrait: Ahi Wi-Hongi's fight for human rights

Friday, 9 July 2021

To get to Ahi Wi-Hongi’s Wellington office you walk through an op shop, wending your way past racks of brightly coloured clothing, and up a steep flight of stairs.

At the top there’s a big room hung with posters and flags, decorated with comfortable couches, and lined with pamphlets. At one end, in the corner, is an oval mirror perched atop a small table.

“Looking good,” someone’s scrawled on the glass.

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Wi-Hongi is the national co-ordinator of Gender Minorities Aotearoa, an organisation providing transgender people with information, advocacy and health services. Run by trans people, GMA was officially established in 2014, though Wi-Hongi was doing all that long before then.

“I was living with a group of friends in Newtown and a lot of us were trans. It was so difficult to find information … there wasn't much that existed in NZ that was evidence-based.There were a lot of opinions, but they were often wildly inaccurate.”

The friends scoured sites and resources for information, and shared it on social media when they found it, eventually creating a website as a sort of one-stop shop.

“Rather than having endless fights on the internet about why we deserve respect and humanity, we'll just write an educational resource that says here's the truth about trans people and why they do have human rights.

“We realised there can be 60 different trans people saying the same thing and nobody is listened to, but the moment you have an organisation, they start listening. It was like, ‘we’re not just a group of trans people screaming into the void, here’s something official’.”

They have a long history of human rights activism that stems from their belief – or obsession – with fairness. What they want is pretty simple: everyone to get a fair go.

But while they’re often called on by media to comment on transgender issues, or for a response to something someone said about a person’s right to exist, they never wanted to become the spokesperson for trans rights.

“I wanted to be a singer, I just can’t sing.”

Now nearly 40, much of Wi-Hongi’s earlier years were spent moving about New Zealand. One of eight children, they were born in Waikato, then moved to South Auckland and ultimately the West Coast.

Small-town Aotearoa was a tough place for a kid questioning their gender identity.

“Coming out as bisexual – I didn’t have another word for it then, but that was the easiest way to explain it – was quite a scandal. I knew of two other gay people – I didn’t know them personally – and had heard all the horrible stuff people said about them.”

Wi-Hongi’s teenage years were spent in and around Nelson. They left the family home for an unhappy stint in foster care before moving in to an old sister’s flat for a while. Homelessness followed.

“I was only 14 or 15 then. I quit school and got a job in a factory, and then I got an older boyfriend. For a lot of young people that's a way to get out of the situation you’re in.”

The teenager and their older boyfriend moved around, living in a house bus for a while, before eventually getting a van they shared with Wi-Hongi’s dog. With no place to park they squatted next to a couple of old sheds on the outskirts of town.

“He knew some people who were squatting in an abandoned house so when they left there we moved in. It was disgusting. Nobody had cleaned it, it didn't have a proper kitchen. It was really gross.”

The house’s structure was sound; there was running water in the bathroom, and Wi-Hongi cleaned it up and made it liveable. The accommodation issue might have been solved, but there were plenty of others still to deal with.

To get support from Work and Income, Wi-Hongi had to prove their parents wouldn’t allow them to return home; something their mother would never say. The problem became a spiral, especially because, as an underage person, the relationship they were in wasn’t legal.

“I was trying to get food parcels from other organisations, and they wanted a letter from WINZ, and everyone was saying you must have an address, or you won't get support. I wasn't prepared to say I was squatting, I’d been in foster care already. I wasn't willing to have my autonomy infringed on like that.”

Fearful of having to return to foster care, Wi-Hongi toughed it out, both in the dilapidated house and the unhealthy relationship.

“My then-boyfriend went to the owners and said to them, ‘The house is a liability, it's full of squatters, why don't you sell it to us really cheap and give us a personal mortgage?’ And they did. Of course when the relationship ended I didn’t get it.”

These days Wi-Hongi worries about those teenagers who are going through what they did all those years ago. Their work at GMA spans both advocacy and activism; doing things like helping trans people get the proper documents and healthcare other people take for granted.

They prefer to ignore the small, fringe groups opposing trans rights, and say it’s more important the public and those in power understand what’s at stake.

“When enough people can see that trans people are just ordinary people, and sometimes quite extraordinary people, that’s what will happen.”

Wi-Hongi’s activism and advocacy go back a long way. For years, they worked in a community liaison role for the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, but they have another, quieter, life as well.

A favourite pastime is camping –“pretty much the exact opposite of this” they say, gesturing towards the GMA headquarters – and they recently caught the backyard chicken bug.

“I brought 25 chickens home; my wife wasn't thrilled, but we’re down to six now.”

In the future, they like to hope there might not be a need for an organisation like GMA, that all people will get the rights they deserve, yet in the meantime there’s plenty of work to do.

On Wednesday, the rooms at the top of the stairs are busy. It’s an official drop-in day, though people drop in all the time. They come for advice, solace, or just a chat.

Wi-Hongi shows the visiting journalists around the place and politely declines having their picture taken through a reflection in the little oval mirror.

“I have a bit of a policy about that; trans people are always photographed looking in a mirror, or putting their makeup on. We’re keen to change that image.”