When Māori GIS came on ten DVDs

There was a period in Māori GIS when one of our answers to the problem of access was a box containing ten DVDs. At the time this did not seem particularly ridiculous. It seemed innovative. Professional GIS software was expensive, the data was large, internet connections were limited and many of the people who needed access to claimant mapping did not have a full GIS environment sitting on their desk. We wanted people to be able to explore more than a few finished maps, so we developed resource packages using ArcReader and prepared GIS content that could be distributed physically.

At one point the complete package occupied ten discs. The digital future therefore arrived in a cardboard box. What interests me now is not only how old the technology looks, but what problem we were actually trying to solve. The aim was to move more mapping capability closer to the people whose whenua, histories and claims were being represented, rather than leaving the useful GIS locked inside specialist offices.

The idea behind the system was serious. Claimant mapping had accumulated a large amount of material: historical blocks, imagery, place names, Crown transactions, contemporary context and supporting maps. A static printed map could show only one prepared view. An interactive resource gave people more freedom to explore information themselves and to see relationships between historical material and the present landscape.

That distinction mattered. A map of whenua was not simply another information product. For claimants, the mapping could sit alongside histories, names, occupation, Crown actions and relationships to place. GIS could bring those strands together spatially, but it did not create the meaning behind them. The technology was useful because it helped people work with the information, not because the software itself had any authority over the whenua.

ArcReader lowered one barrier by allowing prepared projects to be opened without requiring every recipient to own the full professional desktop product. The other barrier was distribution. The files were simply too large for the normal online infrastructure of the time, so optical media was an obvious answer. This was the era when an advanced spatial-information system could still depend on whether Disc 7 had been put back in the right sleeve.

At the 2007 Esri conference the wider idea was described as “Mapping for the Masses”. The title was slightly grand, but the problem was genuine. GIS capability had traditionally been concentrated around specialist software, specialist staff and expensive data. We were trying to make the information accessible beyond that environment.

Thousands of copies of mapping resources were being produced. The GIS workflow therefore unexpectedly included duplication, labelling, packaging and distribution. In modern architecture diagrams the user sits elegantly at the end of an arrow from the platform. In reality, sometimes somebody had to carry the box.

Looking back, however, access was only part of the story. The more important question was whether access increased rangatiratanga over the work. A person could possess all ten DVDs and still depend on somebody else to update a place name, create a new layer or explain where the information had come from. The viewer made the maps easier to reach, but it did not automatically place the full capability in local hands.

That lesson shaped what followed. Māori GIS work increasingly moved toward practical training, local capability, open tools and wānanga where people could learn to work with information themselves. The question became less “Can people see the GIS?” and more “Can they use it, question it, maintain it and make their own decisions about it after the specialist has gone?”

There was also a responsibility to preserve the whakapapa of the information. I do not mean that GIS metadata is whakapapa. It is not. But the files needed enough provenance for future users to know where layers came from, what they represented and what authority or restrictions travelled with them. A box full of digital data was only genuinely useful if the context travelled with it.

The ten-DVD system is easy to view now as primitive technology, but that misses the more interesting point. It was solving exactly the same problem we are still solving: how do we reduce unnecessary barriers between useful spatial information and the people who need it, while avoiding a new dependency on whoever controls the technology?

Today the answer looks very different. QGIS can be downloaded at no cost. National datasets can stream directly into a desktop application. Basemaps arrive through web services. Historical aerial photography can be browsed online. StoryMaps can be opened through a browser. A phone can display mapping that once needed a reasonably serious workstation.

The plastic discs have mostly disappeared, but dependence has not. Instead of a missing DVD there may be an expired subscription. Instead of a broken file path there may be an authentication problem. Instead of a scratched disc there may be a service that changed its API. Technology does not eliminate dependency. It moves it somewhere else.

That is why local choice matters. A system should support the kaupapa rather than forcing the kaupapa to fit the platform. Sometimes that means cloud services. Sometimes it means QGIS and local files. Sometimes it means a public map and a much richer controlled source that never goes online. The right answer is not the newest answer. It is the one people can understand, control and carry forward.

There is also something useful about remembering how quickly supposedly permanent digital formats become historical. CDs and DVDs once looked like durable distribution systems. Then laptops stopped including optical drives. Software changed and operating systems moved on. The files might still exist while the environment needed to open them quietly disappeared.

The modern equivalent will happen as well. Today's cloud platform, file format or web application will not be permanent simply because it feels current in 2026. A kaitiakitanga perspective on information therefore asks more than whether the technology works today. What responsibility do we have to those who will inherit the information? Can the data be exported? Are open formats available? Is there a backup outside the platform? Will somebody understand what the files mean when the current software has gone?

I still like the ten-DVD image because it captures a particular moment in Māori GIS. We were trying to make advanced mapping more accessible with the technology we had. The technology now looks quaint, but the purpose remains recognisable: move capability closer to the people, preserve enough context for the information to remain meaningful and reduce unnecessary dependence on specialist systems.

The tools changed. The kaupapa did not.

For the longer history of that shift, see After the mapper leaves and From DVDs to AI.