Leitis In Waiting

Tonga is one of the few sovereign nations in Polynesia that avoided colonisation, keeping its traditional culture. This meant a broad acceptance of queerness, including ‘leitis’ – third-gendered people whose role as servants and workers is nonetheless supported by traditional institutions, including the country’s monarchy. The leitis at the heart of this story are a generation that increasingly find themselves oppressed by binary notions of male and female, a shift intensified by western-style evangelical churches.