In the Kingdom of Tonga, the Tonga Leitis Association stands as a beacon of hope and resilience. As the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Tonga Leitis Association, the only LGBTQI organisation in Tonga, Joey Joleen Mataele has been a stalwart advocate for LGBTQI rights since 1992. Despite the progress made, members of the community still face significant challenges, particularly in rural and outer island areas where stigma and marginalisation are prevalent.
We spoke with Joleen this Pride Month about how their education programs are addressing pervasive discrimination, TLA’s Miss Galaxy Pageant, and the true meaning of Pride in Tonga.
Could you start by talking to us about the current context in your region when it comes to LGBTQI rights?
Although LGBT rights are there, homosexuality is still criminalised. We are working to change those biblical laws that we inherited from our British forefathers. We’re all suffering from those laws. I always call it the biblical law because it is part of what they preach. Although these laws are not enforced, we still face marginalisation which is why a lot of our members move overseas.
You spoke about homosexuality there, but is this context different when it comes to gender identity?
So we don’t use terminology such as LGBTQI in our everyday lives, it’s not until we deal with donors or overseas in conferences that we use terms like trans or LGBTQI. Back at home, in our everyday lives, we call everybody ‘leiti’. We don’t have specific translations of all the acronyms in Tonga. That is why we adopted the UN SOGIESC (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sexual Characteristics) guideline as it is more inclusive and easier for our people to understand.
We were asked by our Lord Speaker to translate the SOGIESC guideline into Tongan. And when that was done, the Lord Speaker had asked us to take that into the Ministry of Women and Ministry of Internal Affairs and work with them to insert that into the Family Protection Act.
And when that is done, we then have to educate our people on this. So that’s one of the programs that we’re running at the moment, to educate our people on what sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sexual characteristics are all about.
“Although these laws are not enforced, we still face marginalisation which is why a lot of our members move overseas.”
And how does all this play out in the region? What are the lived experiences of people in Tonga with diverse SOGIESC?
Well, even though we’ve done all this work, a lot of our members are still being stigmatised and marginalised in rural areas, especially in the outer islands. It’s a very expensive exercise to go from one island to the other. It’s more expensive than going to New Zealand. To get to the outer islands, we have to hire a small boat to go from island to island and do this education.
A lot of our members that grow up in the rural areas or the small islands all move to the main island because it’s a different thing altogether. They go there and they feel much more accepted. There’s more understanding in the main island than the small islands and the rural areas. That’s why this education needs to be done.
With that context in mind, what does the concept of ‘Pride’ mean to you personally or to people with diverse SOGIESC in Tonga?
For us in Tonga, we have our Pride away from Pride Month because the birthday of the Tonga Leitis Association is in July. We run the whole celebration starting from the 29th of June till the 19th of July, and it covers netball tournaments and other sports. It also includes visitations to the prison, disabilities home, children’s ward, and the paediatric ward. Our contestants from our Miss Galaxy pageant go to all these areas and present gifts.
So to us, Pride is not just about celebrating the flamboyant life that you have, it’s more about giving back to your community. Giving back to our community is part of that Pride which we celebrate. But personally, Pride is something that is given to you, a life that is given to you, and it’s a beautiful life that you need to share with others.
“So to us, Pride is not just about celebrating the flamboyant life that you have, it’s more about giving back to your community. Giving back to our community is part of that Pride which we celebrate. But personally, Pride is something that is given to you, a life that is given to you, and it’s a beautiful life that you need to share with others.”
Could you talk to us more about what the Miss Galaxy Pageant is for those who don’t know?
So using arts and crafts for advocacy is one of our major movements, and that’s how Miss Galaxy came to place. Miss Galaxy started in 1993, so this year will be our 31st anniversary of the Miss Galaxy, and the 32nd anniversary of the Tonga Leitis Association. It started as just a small pageant and we do things differently from normal beauty pageants. It’s a pageant with a lot of education. It’s not about beauty. We’ve taken the beauty out and that’s why we call it the Miss Galaxy Queen Pageant.
Everything that the Tonga Leitis Association works on, that’s where we get our categories from. These categories include gender-based violence, recycle-wear, condom creation, business and talent. And, of course, we still have the formal gown at the end of the programme. But that is how Miss Galaxy is. We’re known as an international pageant, and we welcome anybody to come and join.
And why do you think it is important for people in the UK, or internationally, to learn about the stories and experiences of LGBTQI people in Tonga?
I think the reason why it’s important is that we’ve always been drowned with Western stories. And that is the reason why we decided to produce our movie, ‘Leitis in Waiting’. It started as something small, but then it became a main feature. There are so many untold stories that need to be told. Not only that, it’s also important to hear the voices of the people that are living in Tonga. Coming from a very small island kingdom in the ocean, we see movies from everywhere in the world, but Tonga and the work of TLA was never known until TLA started.
“Not only that, it’s also important to hear the voices of the people that are living in Tonga. Coming from a very small island kingdom in the ocean, we see movies from everywhere in the world, but Tonga and the work of TLA was never known until TLA started.”
What are some of the practical actions that we in the UK can take to support organisations such as the Tongan Leitis Association, or support SOGIESC communities in Tonga in general?
We need money, we need resources, we need technical assistance. This is a world of high-tech. I’m so old-fashioned, but we need resources for that to be able for us to tell our stories. And not only that but to be able to educate our people to continue the work that we’re doing, to take it from the main island to the outer islands, we need resources. It’s a costly exercise. Although we have expertise now to teach, a lot of them have got day jobs. They won’t be able to come and do this unless we give them something to come and do it.
I can’t do everything. I’m 60 years old, and I can’t run from one place to the other. This body needs a time out and self-care. Let alone, we worked for many years for nothing. We weren’t paid. We did all this just to be able to educate our people and get our members to a place where everybody can accept them. A lot of our people have found ways to make something out of themselves through the scholarships that we provide. They’re now chefs, hair stylists, and designers. Some of them are parents, just like me.
You see, a lot of these successes are because of the work we started with Miss Galaxy which resourced a lot of these scholarships. And that’s what the people of the UK need to see. We don’t do it because we want to be praised for it. When we are older, we’ll sit in our wheelchairs and go, thank God that we’ve done this, we have achieved it.
This work will continue from generation to generation.