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Activist Spotlight: Joey Joleen Mataele

Joey Joleen Mataele (@JoleenDeflir) is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Tonga Leiti’s Association (TLA). She has been an advocate for LGBTQI human rights in the Kingdom of Tonga for over thirty years and is a leading figure in the LGBTQI movement in the South Pacific. 

The TLA works to reduce all forms of discrimination against Leitis and LGBTQI people in Tonga by effectively addressing health, education rights and wellbeing needs. It provides an inclusive environment that celebrates diversity in all forms, working with both LGBTQI people and their local communities to promote understanding and equality. The TLA is supported by GiveOut through the Antonia & Andrea Belcher Trans Fund.

To celebrate LGBT History Month 2020, GiveOut’s Lee Dibben spoke with Joleen about her activism, TLA’s innovative approach to education, and the power of conversation. 

You co-founded the Tonga Leiti’s Association in 1992. What was that experience like?

The TLA was founded by Mrs. Papiloa Foliaki (RN/MP) and five uneducated, school dropout, trans people. We wanted to improve the rights of Leitis and celebrate our community. Our main goal was to send our dropouts back to school. However, we found it hard to find support and funding. The main challenge was that we didn’t know how to write proposals. And when you can’t write proposals, it’s impossible to get funding and resources. When we first approached the South Pacific HIV Project, they gave us a form to fill out and looking at that piece of paper made me feel dizzy. The reporting template was another struggle. All of our proposals were turned away because they weren’t written the way they wanted.

Because we couldn’t get funding, we started the Miss Galaxy pageant in 1993, to raise funds for our education and HIV projects. It was a platform to educate our people and reach the wider community too. The pageant has become a huge annual event and happens during our pride week. Since it started, the funds raised have enabled us to supply 72 scholarships to re-educate our dropouts!

The Miss Galaxy Pageant is an annual event held by the TLA. Taking place over several days, the pageant attracts up to 5000 people each night and has become a major event in both Tonga and the South Pacific region. Miss Galaxy celebrates the diversity and creativity of Leitis in Tonga, who compete across different categories to be crowned Miss Galaxy Queen. The term “Leiti” can be translated as “lady” but does not fit neatly into European categories of gender and sexuality. It is commonly used by Tongan individuals with a feminine gender expression who were assigned male at birth, and originates from a rich history of gender diversity in the region. As well as celebrating this history and the contribution of Leitis to Tongan society, the TLA has played an important role in the campaign to reform colonial-era laws which restrict the lives and freedoms of Leitis and LGBTQI people in Tonga.  

How did you overcome those initial barriers?

As the global HIV epidemic developed, the vulnerability of men who have sex with men and transgender people became clear, and suddenly people wanted to work with us. HIV was the only way we were able to gain any resources or start working with our government and decision makers. We played a major role in the response to HIV in Tonga, and we continue to work closely with the Ministry of Health to provide training and testing services. But we still struggled to access funding. 

Sometime between 1997 and 2000 I got tired of writing proposals that were always rejected. So I saved up money from my job singing in a hotel and I got on a plane to Fiji to speak directly with the funders. The amount of money we were asking for was relatively small, and the real problem was that they didn’t understand the way we worked. 

For example, we used the word “retreat” to describe our HIV trainings and these took place at a resort. So funders thought we were going to the beach and lying around! But we had to have the trainings there so that we could book enough space, we were hiring a big marquee and would do everything there. We would provide meals, and everyone would sleep together. It was fun, there was fresh air, and you’d wake up and it felt like home. This was important because it created an environment where you would wake up and start talking, and conversations and training would build from there.

After I visited Fiji, I convinced them to give us a grant. But, even after all that work, I said that I’d only accept it on the condition that they’d come and observe one of our trainings. I wanted them to see that our model worked, even if it was different from their expectations. When they visited, it was the first event which we got everyone from the outer islands to attend. There were over 130 people there. 

Educating people about HIV is an important part of TLA’s work. How did you develop your unique approach to this? 

Classroom learning bores me to death. It also doesn’t work because people don’t want to come! Funders and officials expected us to have more formalised classroom learning, but the HIV trainings in that style run by the Ministry of Health were failing to reach people. We were successful because we created an open conversation, with everyone sitting around and sharing. Our trainings are full of laughter and we don’t formalise anything. It has meant that people trust us, and we are able to have conversations about HIV and STIs that they wouldn’t normally have. Since the start, we’ve been using this model. 

Initially funders and the Ministry of Health were shocked at how open we were with testing. When we hold our quarterly HIV testing events, we have the station at the back of the room. Everyone sits around and then goes over when it’s their turn. There’s no need for confidentiality at this stage, it’s about sharing. Of course, results are confidential, but testing in this way has encouraged more people to take part. At the Miss Galaxy pageant, we have a testing booth at the side. The Ministry of Health didn’t want to do it originally, but we have a hundred or so people getting tested each night. We create an open atmosphere that makes people feel safe, and it works.

In the 1980s and 1990s the HIV/AIDS epidemic dominated world news. Since then, more than 70 million people have acquired the infection and around 35 million people have died. In its initial stages, the epidemic disproportionately affected members of the LGBTQI community and, in particular, men who have sex with men (MSM) and trans people. As such, around the world members of these groups were instrumental in pressing for treatment and government intervention to fight HIV/AIDS. The TLA was one of these groups, promoting safer sex practices and providing HIV education throughout Tonga. At present, TLA holds quarterly HIV testing events across the whole of Tonga, including the outer islands. They have been instrumental in providing support to HIV positive individuals, and reaching communities who do not commonly engage with the Ministry of Health. 

What are the biggest changes you have seen over the past thirty years?

The mentality of the people is the biggest change. There’s a lot more openness and we see a lot of goodness. Thirty or forty years ago you would never see a trans person in a dress in public. Now you see trans men in men’s clothes, and trans women in women’s clothes. They dress the way they want. We have lots of local businesses that sponsor our Miss Galaxy Pageant. This has been important, because it is now common for them to allow their employees to wear clothes which align with their gender. The only place you don’t see this is in government. 

Even in Miss Galaxy we’ve seen a change. We have a category which is based on creating an outfit made from condoms to raise awareness of safer sex practices. There used to be a lot of resistance to it, but now, after all of our education programmes, you don’t see it. The main problems we get are from people who have lived away from Tonga for a while and are still old fashioned in their views. They don’t know how much we have done for people! 

And has this affected how TLA’s work is received?

When we started going to villages, the first five years were hard. They turned us away and said, “we don’t need you, all of the Leitis, sex workers and drug users who have HIV live in the urban areas”. That was wrong and, actually, the people who didn’t think they needed education were more likely to get STIs and HIV. So we showed them evidence collected by the TLA and the Ministry of Health which showed that infection was higher within their own communities. The people they were calling sinners were more likely to be HIV free! 

We worked hard to change the mindset of the people by reaching out to other communities to see if they needed help. As well as our HIV education, we did other things like running anti-poverty programmes for poor women. These were run by people who had gone back to school through our scholarships. So chefs who had graduated from culinary school with our support would teach a class on cookery. Now we’ve worked with these communities for many years and things have changed. We tell the district officer they we’re coming, and they welcome us. They feed us like queens! 

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. Do you have any final thoughts about the work of TLA?

We are able to build relationships because we give back to the community. They see us helping them and so, when we ask for something like legal reform, we already have support from the people we care for. Homosexuality is still illegal in Tonga, and so we need help, resources and funding from both the local and international community to challenge these colonial laws! Being able to sit down together and have a conversation is important, even when you have differences. We need to make sure that we have a seat at the table.  

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