Māhū facts for kids
Māhū ('in the middle') in Native Hawaiian and Tahitian cultures are third gender people with traditional spiritual and social roles within the culture, similar to Tongan fakaleiti and Samoan fa'afafine.
According to present-day māhū kumu hula Kaua'i Iki:
Māhū were particularly respected as teachers, usually of hula dance and chant. In pre-contact times māhū performed the roles of goddesses in hula dances that took place in temples which were off-limits to women. Māhū were also valued as the keepers of cultural traditions, such as the passing down of genealogies. Traditionally parents would ask māhū to name their children.
History
According to some, in the pre-colonial history of Hawai'i, māhū were notable priests and healers, although much of this history was elided through the intervention of missionaries. Others describe the māhū as not having access to political power, being unable to aspire to leadership roles. The first published description of māhū occurs in Captain William Bligh's logbook of the Bounty, which stopped in Tahiti in 1789, where he was introduced to a member of a "class of people very common in Otaheitie called Mahoo... who although I was certain was a man, had great marks of effeminacy about him."
A surviving monument to this history are the "Wizard Stones" of Kapaemāhū on Waikiki Beach, which commemorate four important māhū who first brought the healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaiʻi. These are referred to by Hawaiian historian Mary Kawena Pukui as pae māhū, or literally a row of māhū.
In 1891, when painter Paul Gauguin first came to Tahiti, he was thought to be a māhū by the indigenous people, due to his flamboyant manner of dress during that time. His 1893 painting Papa Moe (Mysterious Water) depicts a māhū drinking from a small waterfall.
