ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an exploration of my experiences as a gay man conducting ethnographic research of non-queer-specific objects of study: Pacific festivals in Aotearoa New Zealand. Exploring these events over the past decade has taken me into diasporic communities and established relationships with communities that have historically been positioned as socially conservative, from an overtly Christian perspective. While this may have been somewhat true of the first generations of migrants, what is also true is that the communities have undergone radical social change in subsequent generations, as the majority of Pacific peoples in New Zealand are now born there and are often mixed-race. Thus, a position of religious-influenced social conservatism can no longer be assumed. Indeed, a radical and artists-led queer Pacific activism has more recently emerged as a counter to these stereotypes, as much a challenge to mainstream New Zealand perspectives as to their own communities.
