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Um, my name is Cassie Harden, and I'm here with box Oceania, and the day so far has been really amazing. It's sunny and it's beautiful. There's lots of people here, and we're having an awesome time box. Oceania. What's what? What is that box? Oceania is, um, a collective of people who are queer, trans intersex, indigenous people of colour. Um who, um, live and love beyond and over the rainbow. How did it start? Um, basically, it started, um, from a group of wahine based in Wellington. [00:00:30] Who, um who noticed that the environment within the I guess the gay or the queer scene within Wellington was quite, um, white dominated. So the idea was that, um the group wanted to provide more events to be able to have a space where people of colour and, um particularly Maori and Pacifica, but it's open to anyone who is a person of colour could come together, and I guess, find a little bit of, um, family really more than anything else. Um And so it started off with events such as homosexual um, shirts and skirts, which were [00:01:00] fundraisers for other organisations, including for, um Samoa. Um and we Yeah. Just held events and be able to build more of a profile for, um, young people who are going through. Yeah. How hard is it to kind of get funding and get kind of resources? I think it's hard for anyone at the moment to be able to get any kind of funding. A lot of it relies on fundraising. And I think that, um, we're really lucky, because we, you know, we do have a presence within the community. [00:01:30] At the moment we're fundraising. Um, we've managed to do things like, um, take vans of of young people up to up in Auckland, um, which we fund raised, or, um, other organisations were able to help us out. So yeah, we if if we need to find the money there, where there's a will, there's a way. But yes, there's not that much out for anyone at the moment. I don't think so. It's not unique to us. If you had all the money in the world, what would be the kind of things that you would be going for all of the money in the world? Well, I guess, [00:02:00] um, we'd be looking at redistributing that money I think that the wrong people will have the all the resources and wealth at the moment. And we want to be saying, actually we need to be taking care of our families and our, um and our people first and foremost. So it's really hard to say exactly what we we would do with that. I think it would be about distributing it back and making sure that people can live and love exactly how how they want to be doing. Really? Yeah. So is there quite a lot of hardship in in Rainbow Communities? At the moment, I would say there is I mean, I'm a youth [00:02:30] worker and I work with young people, mostly, and, um, particularly young, transgender people. It's It's very difficult to be able to, um, live as people want to live. There's a lot of barriers in place for people being able to, um yeah, be as they are basically, and particularly for um, our group in Ocean. We try to create a welcoming space because we acknowledge that a lot of the young people or the people that we work with, it's not just homophobia transphobia, but it's also racism and it's colonisation that has had lasting impacts on [00:03:00] our communities and is often unseen or invisible within kind of mainstream events. So we're here to kind of put that on the agenda where we can, Why do you why do you think it is kind of invisible at the moment? For a lot of people, that's a really, really big question. I think that, I mean, due to colonisation, I think that a lot of, um particularly Maori and Pacific voices are are just not given a platform in the same way. We have inherited a lot of our structures and our ideas about gender and sexuality from a European perspective, [00:03:30] and it absolutely works for a lot of people that's really important. But also we really want to be able to have the time and space to be I to say Actually, what does being gay, what does being Trans all of these things, These are these are English words that we've got what, what does that framework look like for us of people of of the Pacific? Um, and often there's not as much time and space to a vote to be able to do that. So, um, for English words. We have gay, transsexual, bisexual, bisexual and as a Maori. [00:04:00] The main word that I know is. And so, yes, it covers a lot of different things. But I think that, you know, first and foremost, we need to be providing a place for and people of the Pacific to be able to define ourselves and work out who we are. Um, because we have been here for centuries and it's Yeah, it's really important. And I guess using words like gay can actually be so exclusionary, can't it? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the things that I think a lot of, um, Rainbow communities, for lack of a better word, are focusing on [00:04:30] a lot more at the moment. It's, um I think a lot of the time we have to band together under, um, under common terms, but also acknowledging, I guess you know the differences and the huge amount of, um specific. And, um, and those that those umbrella definitions, right? Yeah. So, just personally, what does today mean to you being out here? Um, it's I think it's really important that we're able to be here in a place that there are so many [00:05:00] other people I think is still as a young person. It's amazing to be able to be. It's It's an event that when you look around, there's so many people like us, which is really important and also that it's OK for allies to come along and to support. And it's not. Nobody has to self identify at the gate of the park. It's just people to be able to come together and show some show some love to, um towards each other into the So I think it's really important. I think one of the other things is that, you know, um, just I like I. I think [00:05:30] as as as as Maori and Pacific peoples being able to have, like a strong presence here is really meaningful as well. And um, it's yeah, it's not. It hasn't always been a really, really strong presence, and particularly with our younger people. But we're excited to be to be doing that here today. Just thinking 30 years time in 30 years time. Um, what's your kind of view of an ideal world? What? What would you like New Zealand? A. To be like [00:06:00] I? I mean, to me personally, I think that, you know, we need to move to a different system that places people before profit. I think that's really essential. And what has always happened is that people who are minorities gay, trans or you know, whoever is in a minority grouping is always at the bottom of the heap. And I'd like to see a world where we don't repeat the the same mistakes. I'm sick of seeing the social hierarchy that places some people above others, and I'm sick of people actually still living in poverty. It shouldn't be so hard for [00:06:30] transgender people to be able to find jobs. We shouldn't have had to have gone through all of this 30 years ago just to be able to, like decriminalise our sexuality that we've we've always known about. It's always existed, you know, we've had these laws placed on us that that are not that are not right. So I think I'd like to see us move towards a genuinely more egalitarian society that again, it's not about the prophet, it's about the people it's about. It's about, it's yeah, it's, I think it's all of that, and when we can fight all [00:07:00] of that together, we don't leave anyone behind anymore.
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