Kawe Mahara Queer Archives Aotearoa

06/10/2026

Do YOU want to help preserve & make accessible Aotearoa’s q***r histories???

Come to our working bees in Wellington, and... in AUCKLAND and ONLINE!! 🐝🌈

🐝 What's the working bee for? 🐝
The focus of these working bees will be creating digitised copies of the submissions made to the Select Committee for the Homos*xual Law Reform Bill!

You can help by transcribing the handwritten submissions, by correcting the OCR and AI-generated text of the typewritten submissions, or by simply reviewing and checking the work of others. We will use a fun and easy to learn tool called From the Page where volunteers compare the picture of a submission page at left with the extracted text at right and type in corrections where they are needed.

If you are new to the project, no stress - we will help you get set up. We help with questions volunteers might have about the submissions and how to go about working in From the Page.

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🌈 AUCKLAND: And in Tāmaki Makaurau, we have something really special! We're collaborating with artist Frances Libeau to run a Submissions Transcription Working Bee for volunteers with the support of the Gus Fisher Gallery | Te Whare Toi o Gus Fisher at Waipapa Taumata Rau, The University of Auckland! Come along to the working bee AND see Frances' excellent installation AS LOYAL KIWIS WE CANNOT DESIRE that explores the passing of the Homos*xual Law Reform Act in 1986.

Frances' exhibition can be viewed on Level 4, and the working bees will happen on Level 3 of The Kenneth Myers Centre, at 74 Shortland Street, Auckland. Drop in between 10am and 2pm on Saturday 10 October.

Register here: https://www.cognitoforms.com/KaweMaharaQ***rArchivesAotearoa/Homos*xualLawReform40thAnniversarySubmissionsTranscriptionWorkingBeeAtGusFisherGallery

🌈 WELLINGTON: In Pōneke, we will have 2 spare laptops for volunteers! Our sessions are Saturday 3 October, 10am-12 Noon, and Saturday 17 October, 10am-12 Noon, at the National Library, lvl 1, 70 Molesworth St.

🌈 ONLINE: You can join online for the same times as the Wellington sessions - just send us an email or text for the zoom link! [email protected] or 021 0200 7913.

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Huge thanks to our volunteers who have already contributed!!

06/10/2026

GiveOUT day starts TOMORROW Thursday 8 October and runs till Monday 12 October!! 😍

💸During this time, if you donate $2, it becomes $4! $10 becomes $20! $150 becomes $300! And so on until we run out of match pool funding! 💸

This is all thanks to the amazing are the team at Rainbow NZ Charitable Trust, who've secured a pool of sponsors so that during GiveOUT Day - 8 to 12 October 2026 - every donation you make to us (or any other q***r charity taking part, like our wonderful friends at Charlotte Museum Te Whare Takatāpui-Wāhine o Aotearoa) is DOUBLED! 😮

DONATE HERE: https://giveout-day-2026.raiselysite.com/kawe-mahara-q***r-archives-aotearoa

Last year, we used our funding to purchase scanning equipment, and to travel for our transcription working bees. This year we are fundraising for operating costs, to help us establish secure Cloud-based storage for our digital collection materials.

Most material these days is created digitally - whether it be photos on your phone, posters created on Canva, or meeting minutes typed up on word. To preserve these important archives from today's q***r world for tomorrow, a paper filing system won't cut it - we need digital storage!

Help us meet our goals by donating on GiveOUT Day, 8-12 October! 🌈

08/08/2026

Big news!! The fantastic Homos*xual Law Reform pop-up exhibition has been extended another week - you now have until 15th August to go and view this wonderful collection of taonga from us, National Library of New Zealand, Alexander Turnbull Library, Archives New Zealand, and Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision!! 😍

09/07/2026

ON THIS DAY, 9 July 1986, the Homos*xual Law Reform Bill passed its third reading, decriminalising homos*xuality in Aotearoa.

As we honour the fortieth anniversary of homos*xual law reform, there will be many posts about the big, dramatic moments during the campaign - and rightfully so, it was one of the most intense political debates Aotearoa has ever witnessed! But today should also be a time to acknowledge all the hard, unglamorous work that went on behind-the-scenes.

Organising - working together with other people to create a movement - can be downright tedious work. It involves seemingly endless meetings, tense internal debates, long phone calls, significant administrative work, late-night planning meetings, protest marshalling, collecting and creating resources, and figuring out how to work with people who you might have key political differences with. All of this and more was true of the homos*xual law reform campaign, where activists worked tirelessly to collaborate, build coalitions, urge others into action, lobby politicians, and so much more.

These posters and newsletters come from the collections of the Auckland and Wellington Gay Task Forces, two groups which played a significant part in the campaign.

Today, we honour all of those who worked so tirelessly to secure this important victory - decriminalising homos*xuality, and paving the path for all of us to begin living more freely. In a time when trans & inters*x communities in particular are under attack - by much the same people, using much the same arguments as those who opposed homos*xual law reform in 1986 - understanding the work of those who came before us is more important than ever before. We won in the past, and we can do it again in the future.

If you want to see more from our collections - whether about homos*xual law reform, or something else from our q***r pasts - please get in touch!

07/07/2026

We discussed this exact point in our submission opposing the Definition of Woman and Man Bill, that Quentin Allan articulates so well in this excellent article -

"If today’s anti-trans talking points feel strangely familiar, it is because we have heard them before. A trawl through the parliament’s debate archive, Hansard, shows just how unrestrained the rhetoric once was – pages and pages of speeches that ranged from the merely confused to the outright unhinged.

Swap yesterday’s key words and phrases (so**my, decadence, moral decay) for today’s (biological reality, fairness in sport, ideology in schools) and voilà: the choreography is near identical. Some (but not all) of the names have changed and technologies have evolved (hello social media), but the strategy remains consistent: brand a minority as a danger to society, nay a civilisation-ending hazard, and sell tickets to salvation."

Check out an excerpt of our submission on our instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DaOr44xkhIk/

July 9 marks 40 years since gay s*x was decriminalised, but the scare tactics used as the Homos*xual Law Reform Bill worked its way through parliament in the 1980s are still being used now. This time, they’re focused on transgender people.

01/03/2026

We are so excited about this!! Fantastic to see Pride Taranaki's Rainbow Archive Project getting started

Ngāmotu District Council’s Puke Ariki Museum and Pride Taranaki have entered into a partnership that will see the stories of the region’s LGBTQIA+ communities collected, preserved, and added to the wider Taranaki story.

Full story via our website🔗in comments⬇️

03/10/2025