Sãmoan Origin Story

In their research, Sãmoan American artist and writer Dan Taulapapa McMullin (co-editor with Yuki Kihara of Sãmoan Queer Lives), found a Sãmoan origin story in which the human race first began with two males. Indigenous Queer stories were reproduced and circulated in Europe by explorers, missionaries, and merchants who encountered MãhÅ«, Fa'afafine, and countless other Indigenous third gender communities in the Pacific. As McMullin's work has revealed, this was the first time many in the West had begun to entertain the concept we now understand as 'Queer.'