TE ŌHANGA MAURI #147 - DATA SOVEREIGNTY: PROTECTING OUR STORIES AND OWNING OUR DIGITAL FUTURE
Tēnā koutou e te whānau. In our previous posts, we have looked at how to use our physical resources like timber, food, and energy to build a stronger North. Today, we are looking at the new digital landscape. Our stories, our voices, and our whakapapa are now being shared online more than ever before. In this post, we look at why we need to treat our data as a treasure and how we can protect it from being misused.
The Problem: Digital Extraction
Currently, the digital world often works like the "Leaky Bucket" economy we discussed in our first post. Big tech companies treat the internet like a field of "free" information. They "scrape" or collect our social media posts, our family photos, and our recorded kōrero to train their AI models and make massive profits.
In Research Report #230, we describe this as "Digital Colonialism." It is a system that takes our cultural "flesh" (our unique data) and uses it to build tools that we don't own and that often don't understand our values. When our stories are taken out of our hands, we lose our "Mauri" (our life force) in the digital world. We become products for someone else's machine rather than the authors of our own future.
The Proposal: Data Kaitiakitanga
We are proposing a strategy for Data Sovereignty. This is a vision where we, as a community, decide how our information is collected, stored, and used. This model suggests we move from being "data sources" to becoming "Data Kaitiaki" (guardians). Our proposal includes:
Treating Data as a Taonga: Viewing our digital information as a treasure that belongs to our whānau and our mokopuna, not to a global corporation.
Sovereign Platforms: Supporting the development of local, Māori-led digital platforms and apps that prioritize our privacy and our values.
Indigenous Licensing: Proposing the use of cultural licenses that ensure our stories cannot be used for profit without our permission.
Digital Literacy: Training our rangatahi to be "Digital Tohunga" who know how to protect their own data and build safe digital spaces for our community.
Owning Our Digital Future
This strategy is about ensuring that the digital world reflects who we actually are. When we own our data, we own our stories. Our research shows that by "plugging the leak" in our digital landscape, we can ensure that our cultural heritage remains vibrant and safe for generations to come.
We are proposing a future where Taitokerau is a leader in digital safety and innovation. By protecting our stories and owning our digital tools, we ensure that the "broadcast" of the North remains under our own authority. Our data is an extension of our mana, and it’s time we treated it that way.
This series is based on Research Report #230 - A Unified Ontology for the Operationalisation of Te Ōhanga Mauri and the Realisation of Te Whenua Taurikura. If you would like to read the full report, please contact the author via the contact us page.
