Online commentary and resources about tikanga Māori in the new digital world. Explanations of how to apply traditional tikanga to tech and applying new tikanga to still be relevant in the digital world.
Māori Data Sovereignty is now more crucial than ever, with “Dr. Pratik Desai, a Silicon Valley computer scientist who has founded multiple Artificial Intelligence platforms, boldly predicts that a human being’s “consciousness could be uploaded onto digital devices by the end of the year [2023]”. For my regular readers, you will know I predicted this … Read more
On Friday (Saturday NZT) Google released a Civil Rights Audit that it had voluntarily contracted an external law firm WilmerHale that examines how its policies and services impact civil rights and made a number of recommendations to address misinformation and hate speech. It is too American centric and doesn’t even appear to consider the Indigenous … Read more
Microsoft recently announced that it was upgrading it’s search engine Bing’ to include AI from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. One new feature is a chat feature. Microsoft only sent out invites to select users so far, but it looks like it will be open for public testing in the coming weeks. At this early … Read more
ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It has been discussed by international mainstream media with many academics and education facilities concerned at it’s ability to assist with plagiarised writings and research. As with any new technologies, there is very little Indigenous perspectives or input into developments which … Read more
This is an opinion piece as a Tikanga practitioner and Māori Data expert who is not a lawyer and has no formal legal training. The recent Supreme Court judgement recognises Tikanga Māori is common law and applicable in the legal system. This gives further impact and recognition to the legal status of Māori Data Sovereignty … Read more
The following whakataukī summarises the whole notion and idea of Māori Data Sovereignty and the importance that Māori Data Sovereignty is a Te Tiriti right not just for Iwi, but for all of Māori society and individuals as noted in WAI 2522. The original intention of the whakataukī was not about Māori Data Sovereignty as … Read more
An analysis of traditional Tikanga Māori associated with research, storage and analysis of Māori biological samples including DNA.
Comprehensive definition of what a Taonga Species is using mātauranga Māori and cosmology
As opposed to conforming to Eurocentric values and academic comfort levels, this guideline is the first published bioethics guideline encapsulating traditional and modern mātauranga Māori, to explore ethical research & storage of Māori genetic samples. This is the complete guideline with the ISBN: 978-0-9582597-8-1. Similar to the New Zealand Health system overhaul (2022) to … Read more
Literature reviews of current Māori ethics and frameworks associated with research, storage and analysis of Māori DNA and biological samples
As with any new technology there are positives and often more negatives for Māori and other Indigenous Peoples protecting their traditional knowledge from abuse, appropriation and theft. In the short time that Non Fungible Tokens have been created, traded and advertised online there is a large amount of cultural appropriation and stolen images being transformed … Read more
Can non-Māori can use the New Zealand Domain Name maori.nz? As the primary author of the application that lobbied InternetNZ to create maori.nz domain name in 2000, I say yes. Further information about Māori Data Sovereignty is in Compendium of Māori Data Sovereignty. Anyone anywhere in the world can register a maori.nz domain. But, only … Read more
Tikanga evolves is a common term. Often this means people who were not brought up with mātauranga creating new tikanga while traditional values are forgotten or not transitioned into evolving society. This article discusses several common tikanga about the tapu nature of the head, not putting food on your head, not sitting on a table … Read more
The High Court decision that the Ministry of Health must hand over Māori Data to Whānau Ora is a significant and swift stride towards Māori Data Sovereignty that has left Māori and the government exposed. Ideally, the government and academia would have been engaging with Māori groups and Iwi to recognise Māori/hapū/marae/Iwi Data Sovereignty and … Read more
This article introduces new datasets of Marae names that will form the basis of Marae data sovereignty for database administrators that recognise Marae rights and valuable information to navigate the whole Māori Data Sovereignty landscape. The data sets are available from https://github.com/ktaiuru Introduction Marae/Rūnanga Data Sovereignty refers to the inherent rights and interests of Marae/Rūnanga … Read more
Aotearoa, while not an original name for New Zealand, has been popularised and is commonly used as the Māori name for the North, South and Stewart Islands. For this reason, I support the dual name being proposed by the Māori Party, to be an official dual name for New Zealand. It is important to note … Read more
Using traditional Māori knowledge, I discuss cultural appropriateness of deep fakes and face swapping filters. Some of this discussion is also applicable to Facial Recognition systems. Apart form Māori, this article may be of interest to developers and organizations with Facial Recognition Systems. It is against tikanga Māori (customary beliefs) to have your image on … Read more