Dr Karaitiana Taiuru regularly composes blog posts on topics relating to Māori and Artificial Intelligence, Data Sovereignty, Safety, Cultural Appropriation and other related topics. Please subscribe to the RSS feed http://www.taiuru.co.nz/rss to keep up to date.
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Online Māori Scams – careful of the scuzzie
Online Māori are increasingly becoming targets of direct ethnic online scams that utilise our culture to try to take advantage of Māori. The latest scam involves someone on Facebook, Instagram, Phone message and other social media claiming to he one…
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Data is a Taonga. A customary Māori perspective
Also see Māori Data is a Taonga Chapter Also of interest and diverse views, an interview in English with myself, Tau Henare and Ngapera Riley discussing Māori Data as a Taonga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57nFcXAycFg 2018 version (original) This paper has been written…
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Young Māori favor an online pornography filter
An analysis of Māori data from the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) report titled “Research findings of a survey on how and why Young New Zealanders view online pornography” published in December 2018. The complete report is available…
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Māori Experiences of Online Hate Speech
This article extracts Māori specific information from the NetSafe report titled “Personal Experiences of Online Hate Speech and offers personal analysis of their results and my personal experience with online hate. I have critiqued the definitions used int he survey. That…
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BP New Zealand cultural appropriation of Māori
BP New Zealand appears to have used Māori culture without consultation, offering Fair Trade coffee that will help you to become more fertile by placing the Polynesian recognised deity of fertility Tiki in the corner of it marketing material. Moreover, the…
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5th Craft Beer brewer removes offensive Beer Label
Belgium Beer brewer Brussels Beer Project removed their offensive beer label within hours of the New Zealand media publishing concerns at the cultural appropriation. This is now the 5th craft brewer this year that has removed offensive beer labels after…
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Cyber Safety issues for Maori
Culture and Context in Online Safety Session at the Crossroads. Notes from the panel discussion I was involved with at the NetSafety conference Crossroads. The latest Internet Safety research from NetSafe shows that Māori are again over represented in negative…
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New web could be Indigenous friendly
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, is leading the design of a new initiative called Solid. The project aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy.…
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Māori teens are more likely to be victims of online predators
Māori teens, especially girls and those with a disability are at higher risk than any other ethnic group in New Zealand to be harassed and to receive unsolicited nude images. The latest NetSafe report shows that Māori are more likely…
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Can te reo Māori be digitally colonised?
Voice recognition of te Reo Māori and automated Maori translations via a computational device is colonisation and commercialisation no matter if by Māori or by tauiwi. Our traditional stories warn us of such recordings of the voice. Hence, I believe…
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Introduction to Māori Cultural Considerations with Genetics
This paper discusses the implications of traditional tikanga Māori practices with Genetic scientific research. Objectives There are four primary objectives for this research: To show a direct relationship between traditional Māori tikanga and cosmology to explain why tikanga is applicable…
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Fourth culturally offensive UK brewery apologises
28 hours after writing a public tweet (DM UK media) and a detailed article on my web site accusing UK brewery Rammy Craft of ignoring correspondence regarding culturally offensive beer label, they reply with an explanation and apology. The email reply…
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Culturally offensive UK brewery ignores requests
Rammy Craft Ales, a UK brewer producer of the beer labeled Flaori Maori have ignored several communications over the past 7 weeks that their beer label is likely to be offensive to Maori. This is the fourth UK brewery I…
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Artificial Intelligence and Māori
I was interviewed to contribute a Māori perspective to the The Artificial Intelligence Forum of New Zealand (AIFNZ) inaugural report. It appears as though only my statement was published with no acknowledgements. In the whole report Māori is only considered…
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Third UK Brewer removes culturally offensive label
A third UK brewery in the past few months has removed offensive to Māori beer labels and apologised after being made aware of the fact. As with the other two cases to date, I used the same letter I originally…
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Culturally offensive UK brewery – honest mistake
I was approached by whanau in the UK about the Whakatu beer logo (see below). I was asked if I could/would do anything as I have has some success in the past with such cultural appropriation. After looking at Exmoor…
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Tikanga Māori considerations with digital apps
This analysis uses two apps offered by Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and looks at their tikanga and privacy issues. The purpose of the article is to raise awareness of traditional knowledge being used to create new ideas to attract youth…
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UK Craft beer removes offensive to Māori material
A craft brewery in a small town in England, branded a small batch of their beer NZ Pale Ale with an image that is likely to be offensive to a large population of Māori. Within hours of raising the issue…
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Taking on the international conglomerate and succeeding
After writing my story about Huggies New Zealand (owned by international company Kimberly-Clark Corporation) and their incorrect and offensive baby names advise on their web site, I contacted Radio Waatea who very professionally and neutrally interviewed me on the topic on…
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Huggies New Zealand – culturally offensive with Māori baby names
HuggiesNZ a trusted brand for new parents is an example of a corporation discriminating against Māori with little or no disregard to the long term implications for individuals, cultures and laws. Their advice, if followed, could cause irreversible damage to children and…
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Indigenous Peoples access to the new digital Terra Nullius
This research shows that there is a lack of access to Internet and infrastructure by Indigenous Peoples of Alaska, New Mexico and Hawai’i and proves that the Internet is a digital Terra Nullius where colonizers have systemically obstructed access and…
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Hijacked Māori domain name still held to ransom 12 years later
The early years of .nz Internet domain names saw Māori and Iwi marginalized and ignored, Māori domain names held to ransom and Iwi dictated to about their online representation. This is important to remember as a domain name is the…
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Prevalence and attitudes of Māori teenagers about sexting
In late 2017 NetSafe released a research report about New Zealand teenage sexting. NetSafe state that the report was the first time this type of research had been completed in New Zealand and that it is a snap shot that…
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Te reo Māori alternative for Lorem Ipsum
Te Re Māori is an official language of New Zealand. It is the Indigenous language of New Zealand/Aotearoa. The use of Latin as a place holder, while an international practice, there is no reason why any Indigenous Peoples can not…