Baklang Kabahayan: Saan Ba Tayo Papunta? Doon, Ngayon at sa Darating Panahon (Where Are You Heading? There, Now and in the Coming Season)

The migrations of Indigenous people across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa can be seen as a pattern that is both dispersal and arrival: the paradox of being native and in diaspora. The experiences of people who express Indigenous genders (breaking colonial binaries) while away from our ancestral homelands are an intersection of (not) belonging that hatch ‘knew’ strategies for body/land reclamation. Drawing on Indigiqueer, Black Trans* Feminist and land epistemologies, I collaborated with a small group of bakla, takatāpui and irawhiti artists in Aotearoa/New Zealand to ask: is it possible for Indigenous people to be in diaspora if our bodies are made of our original lands and waters? We wanted to understand how our embodied Indigiqueer and trans* knowledge impacted our navigation of body/land sovereignty. Using a creative practice research approach that drew on somatic listening, on-site ritual and performance, we built a bahay kubo (traditional Filipino bamboo dwelling), according to original teachings, and moved it through the streets of Wellington in search of rest. Over the course of this six-month ritual, when we learned to build and transport the bahay kubo from our building site (Kirikiriroa, ‘Hamilton’) to Te Whanganui-a-Tara (’Wellington’) for an ephemeral installation and performance, we externalised our experiences as Indigiqueer people in diaspora and homeland. In return for offering our vision of home despite displacement, we uncovered a ‘kinstellation’ (Recollet Johnson, 2019) in unexpected places. This is a story of the Indigi-Trans* power to transform binaries of (not) belonging into ground for (re)connection and (re)clamation of land/body.