Zealandia

LGBTQ Māori and Pacific youth can face discrimination on multiple fronts, but for the members of Auckland's growing vogue scene, art, dance and performance offer a way to reconnect with identity and community. We meet some of the city's breakout vogue stars to hear how they discovered voguing, and the role it's played in transforming their lives.

Hidden at the very top of New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula and accessible only by off-road track is the Mahana commune. Founded in 1978, for nearly 40 years its inhabitants have been elusive.

Inside the lives of West Aucklanders affected by the highly addictive and gravely dangerous synthetic cannabinoid drug known as “synnies”.

VICE meets a group of 14 and 15-year-olds who have already racked up a string of criminal convictions growing up among poverty, gangs and boredom under the shadow of Mt Taranaki. Some, like Kelsten, have one last chance to dodge lockup by taking part in an early intervention course for youth offenders. At home, on the streets and in the wilderness, we get to know these boys as real people, not just statistics. We also observe the relationships that form between the boys and their mentors, including Taranaki native Todd Williams who served jail time himself and is determined the teens don’t make the same mistakes he did.

Fewer than four percent of New Zealand’s population are Māori language speakers. Three teenagers from rural town Waipu have become unlikely heroes in the fight to preserve the indigenous language by making heavy metal inspired by Māori history. VICE embeds with Alien Weaponry in the build up to the release of their first album, from the garage on the de Jong family farm where brothers Henry (drums) and Lewis (vocals and guitar) and their friend Ethan Trembath (bass) rehearse, to catching the bus to high school, working at the local mechanics and bringing in the washing for mum. We also road trip to Lake Rotoiti for an overnight visit to Otaramarae where the brothers reconnect with their iwi [tribes] Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāti Raukawa. It’s a chance for the band to immerse themselves in the culture and history at the core of their music, and consider their personal part in the resurgence of te reo Māori as the language struggles for survival.

VICE gets up close and personal with a cross section of Aotearoa’s most ferocious female fighters as they prepare for the Lethal Ladies fight meet. There’s Wendy Talbot, who sleeps in her van so she can be closer to her gym, and Kelly Broerse, a former competitive ballroom dancer who’s found her true calling in the Muay Thai ring. Baby “Pitbull” Nansen, fresh from becoming the first New Zealand woman to fight at New York’s Madison Square Garden, takes us inside SMAC Gym to show how combat sports can turn lives around—just as they did for her. VICE examines the motivations and challenges of the top echelon of female fighting talent, and reveals the raw truth of exactly what it takes to get in the ring: the physical toll it takes on the body, the mental toll it takes on the mind. “You’re getting in the ring with someone who wants to beat the crap out of you,” says Broerse. “It’s terrifying.”

Sex workers in New Zealand have the same employment rights as any other employee, but 15 years after the radical law reform that brought about full legislation of prostitution the industry still struggles with stigma. Madam Mary takes us inside the “privileged bubble” that is her luxurious brothel and sex dungeon in Wellington. Services at the Funhouse go for around $500 per hour, compared to the cold streets of Christchurch where Phoenix says some nights on the job end with just $60 in her pocket. Victoria runs her business quietly from home in Merivale, a posh suburb of Christchurch where at least one enraged neighbour wants her out. As dominatrix Gwyn says, “The sex is definitely not the most interesting part of the job and I feel like often the desire to talk about the sex is essentially used as a way to exceptionalise sex work and to justify othering us.”

125 years after New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote, VICE investigates what it’s like to be a female politician in 2018. Embedding with women from across the political spectrum—Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, National’s deputy leader Paula Bennett, Labour MP Louisa Wall, and former prime minister Helen Clark—we learn what women in politics face that men don’t, and, with New Zealand’s Parliament the most gender-equal it’s ever been, how the female experience of politics has changed over the past 30 years. We find out why, in a country with some of the worst domestic violence statistics in the developed world, a critical mass of women is essential to get issues that disproportionately affect women addressed—and why that’s good for everyone.

VICE embeds with four Tongan nationals who have been sent back to the tiny island nation where they were born after serving prison time in New Zealand and the United States. Former gang members, they often struggle to reconnect with the culture, the language, and the people.

Journalist Baz MacDonald searches for evidence of the survival bunkers being shipped to New Zealand, while investigating the factors causing this rise in paranoia among the rich and the effect this rhetoric has on their destination of choice - the mountain resort town, Queenstown.