Digital Colonialism

Digital colonialism is the digitisation, ownership, control or commercialisation of Indigenous data and knowledge by a dominant culture, without the fully informed consent of the Indigenous Peoples that knowledge belongs to.

I first defined digital colonialism in 2015, drawing on the experience of Māori communities in Aotearoa New Zealand. It sits alongside related work by Renata Avila (2017) and the concept of data colonialism developed by Ulises Mejias and Nick Couldry (2019). Data colonialism describes the continuous extraction of personal data for profit. Digital colonialism, as I use it, focuses on what happens to Indigenous knowledge, culture and data when they are digitised on someone else’s terms.

What is digital colonialism?

Colonisation took land and resources without consent and moved control of them away from Indigenous Peoples. Digital colonialism repeats that pattern with data and knowledge. Mātauranga, whakapapa, language and community data are digitised, stored and shared under the rules of governments, technology companies and well-meaning consultants rather than under tikanga. Once knowledge is digitised, who owns it, where it is stored and who decides how it is used become questions of data sovereignty.

Ten forms of digital colonialism

1. A dominant culture pressures a minority culture to digitise knowledge meant only for closed hierarchies, or material meant to stay on radio or in print.
2. Ownership of the data, its digital form and how it is shared is disregarded.
3. Digitised data becomes a data sovereignty issue that the community no longer controls.
4. Digital workers consulting with Indigenous Peoples digitise their content without explaining the power and risks of the technology, including the loss of intellectual property rights.
5. Corporations and governments digitise Indigenous data without consultation.
6. New internet naming systems, including new generic and country code top-level domains (gTLDs and ccTLDs), are approached with a colonial mindset.
7. An ethnic minority makes up most of those on the wrong side of the digital divide, while its knowledge and resources are digitised by others.
8. The country code domains of minority cultures are commercialised.
9. Commercial entities pay translators to create software terminology in an Indigenous language, then claim ownership of it.
10. Search engine results are manipulated to hide or alter Traditional Knowledge.

Digital colonialism and Māori data sovereignty

Māori data is a taonga. Decisions about it belong with whānau, hapū and iwi, not with whoever happens to hold the servers. That is why digital colonialism and Māori data sovereignty are two sides of the same issue: one describes the harm, the other the remedy.

It is also why data residency is not the same as data sovereignty. Storing Māori data in Aotearoa is useful, but it does not on its own give Māori any say over how that data is collected, used or shared.

Example: broadband in Ruatāhuna

Ruatāhuna, one of the most remote Māori communities in Aotearoa, was connected to broadband (Te Karere). A kaumātua accepted the change because the world is changing. But the technology arrived without regard for tikanga or for what the community actually needed.

The support around it was not ready either. NetSafe protects the public from cybercrime and bullying, but it was not equipped to handle tikanga Māori issues or to support Māori victims in a culturally appropriate way. The 2020 Communications Trust, which puts computers into homes of Māori whānau, has had real benefits for employment, education and online safety, but did not understand tech abuse involving tikanga. Ngā Pū Waea, the government-appointed body for Māori broadband, is now defunct. My concern is for rangatahi facing online harms with very little culturally grounded support.

Example: the Budapest Convention and marae networks

This is a hypothetical Māori data sovereignty issue with the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. If marae run their own networks, data held on them could be taken by law enforcement during an investigation and sent offshore. That raises a question the Convention does not answer: who decides what Māori data is relevant, and under whose authority? Indigenous perspectives are needed in data law precisely because Māori data is a taonga.

Example: the NZ COVID Tracer app

The NZ COVID Tracer app is a real example of design problems that partnership with Māori from the start could have prevented:

• Some of its data was stored in an Amazon Web Services data centre in Australia.
• Registering required an internet connection, which many whānau did not reliably have.
• It assumed one device and one email address per person, which does not suit whānau who share devices.
• Email addresses in te reo Māori were not recognised.
• It had no protections for people affected by domestic violence, a higher risk for Māori.

The result was that some Māori communities could not use the app, and others refused to.

Wider concerns

Digitising knowledge can be like mining: value is extracted and taken elsewhere. The cloud is, in a sense, a colonial ship. Māori leaders now need to protect data the way earlier generations protected land.

The same pattern shows up in newer technology. AI systems can reproduce whakapapa and karakia without any cultural authority to do so. Moko are used in advertising. And recording Māori ethnicity in data collection is often optional, which makes Māori invisible in the very datasets used to make decisions about them.

How to prevent digital colonialism

The answer is partnership and co-design with Māori from the very start of any data-driven system, not consultation after the design is finished. My He Tangata, He Karetao, He Ātārangi framework sets out how to do that for AI.

Frequently asked questions

What is digital colonialism?

Digital colonialism is the digitisation, ownership, control or commercialisation of Indigenous data and knowledge by a dominant culture without the fully informed consent of the Indigenous Peoples it belongs to. Dr Karaitiana Taiuru first defined the term in this sense in 2015.

What is the difference between digital colonialism and data colonialism?

Data colonialism, a concept developed by Ulises Mejias and Nick Couldry, describes the continuous extraction of personal data for profit. Digital colonialism focuses specifically on Indigenous knowledge, culture and data being digitised and controlled on someone else’s terms.

What is an example of digital colonialism in New Zealand?

The NZ COVID Tracer app stored some data in Australia, assumed one device per person, did not recognise te reo Māori email addresses and lacked protections for domestic violence victims. Some Māori communities could not or would not use it.

How does digital colonialism relate to Māori data sovereignty?

Digital colonialism describes the loss of control over Māori data; Māori data sovereignty is the right of Māori to govern that data as a taonga. Storing data in New Zealand (data residency) does not by itself deliver data sovereignty.

How can digital colonialism be prevented?

Through partnership and co-design with Māori from the start of any data-driven system, grounded in tikanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

References

Avila, R. (2017). [Title to confirm]. [Source to confirm].

Couldry, N., & Mejias, U. A. (2019). Data colonialism: Rethinking big data’s relation to the contemporary subject. Television & New Media, 20(4), 336–349. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476418796632

Mejias, U. A., & Couldry, N. (2019, October). [Title to confirm]. DATACTIVE. https://data-activism.net/2019/10/bigdatasur-some-thoughts-on-decolonizing-data/

Taiuru, K. (2017). [Title to confirm]. [Source to confirm].

How to cite this page

Taiuru, K. (2015, July 24). Digital colonialism. Taiuru & Associates Ltd. https://www.taiuru.co.nz/Digital-Colonialism