Māori Data Sovereignty

Commercial Māori language projects hold our people to ransom for what is our birth right – our language  The Papakupu is a Māori Language Dictionary that consists of headwords from published Māori dictionaries , databases, glossaries and Iwi dictionaries. It is estimated there will be over 150,000 unique headwords with each headword consisting of up … Read more

Archived from September 10 21012 .kiwi.nz was launched at 10am this morning in an effort to gain at least 500 registrations within a month so that the domain could be a permanent domain. Within one hour 1000 registrations occurred. Already I have noticed a dozen cyber-squatted Māori names. If you have not already done so, I would suggest you … Read more

The new General Top Level Domain GTLD program from ICANN which closed its first round of applications included a number of cultural identity and society names being applied for by corporations. The public have been able to express their objections to strings and have been busy doing so. While it may seem as though it … Read more

The New Zealand governing body of .nz domain names has released a new public consultation to discuss changing the way .nz web addresses look. As opposed to .co.nz , .maori.nz,  .iwi.nz, etc., the proposal calls for a simple .nz address. This will have a number of positive impacts (if managed correctly early in the process) … Read more

As the .iwi.nz moderator, I publically opposed the .kiwi.nz application. The main reason was that I believe it would force Iwi to register their current domain names in .kiwi. to protect Iwi on-line identity. It is a common practice for unscrupulous people to register names that are similar to genuine names that may be spelt incorrectly … Read more

The Domain Name Commissioner released her monthly statistics on .nz domain names for December 2012. The details and summaries are below including my commentary. .maori.nz / māori.nz 663 registered .maori.nz names in December 2011 compared to 621 in December 2010. There were 82 renewals, 8 new registrations for December 2011 with 12 new registrations and 97 renewals … Read more

It has been a busy past two weeks with major Māori initiatives and developments by New Zealand telcos and associated parties. This is a summary of those initiatives with an explanation of who the Māori groups are. 2 Degrees 2Degrees Mobile announced a Te Reo Maori smart phone, the IDEOS X3 , while at the Te Huarahi Tika Trust … Read more

2 Degrees yesterday announced  the release of an Android phone with Māori menus. They did not mention that they have in fact blocked the development of Māori language development with smart phones for those who do not use 2Degrees and their “one” mobile phone. Android phones use an open source system to operate. Open Source means … Read more

Using word frequency lists including: a Māori predictive text list, lists of common Māori words in New Zealand English and common Māori words used in Māori. I discuss and analyse which words would be most beneficial in a Māori predictive text database for Māori and introduce the need to update New Zealand English databases used … Read more

The vowels with macrons indicate the vowel is pronounced longer. 1. E Ihowā Atua, O ngā iwi mātou rā Āta whakarangona; Me aroha noa Kia hua ko te pai; Kia tau tō atawhai; Manaakitia mai Aotearoa 2. Ōna mano tāngata Kiri whero, kiri mā, Iwi Māori, Pākehā, Rūpeke katoa, Nei ka tono ko ngā hē Māu … Read more

I gladly accepted an invitation to participate as a practitioner for the on-line dialogue on Using Citizen Media Tools to Promote Under-Represented Languages from November 16 to 22, 2011 from New Tactics http://www.newtactics.org . I am writing this post in the hope to raise more publicity of this key initiative which will allow anyone with a … Read more