Kaitiakitanga and responsibility
Holding Māori spatial information can create continuing responsibilities to people, whenua, kōrero and future users. In GIS, kaitiakitanga is wider than a technical role such as database administrator. It is about how the information is carried, explained and kept useful through time.
That can include choosing not to put some kōrero into GIS at all. The reason comes from the kaupapa and relationships around the information, not from a rule issued by the software or this site.
More than stewardship software
Information-management language often uses stewardship to mean maintaining data quality, metadata and access. Those are useful tasks, but they do not fully describe kaitiakitanga.
A technically excellent GIS can still serve the kaupapa badly if it:
- loses the relationship between information and the people or sources it came from
- publishes exact locations when that detail adds no value for the audience
- separates kōrero from provenance and whakapapa
- quietly reuses information for a different purpose
- depends on a single person who may leave
- cannot be handed over in a usable form
- keeps copies indefinitely without anybody knowing why
Conversely, a small offline archive can be entirely appropriate where it keeps the information understandable, recoverable and connected to the people doing the mahi.
Responsibilities across the lifecycle
A useful GIS review is to look at what changes at each stage.
| Stage | Useful questions |
|---|---|
| Collection | Why is this needed? Who is part of the kaupapa? Is GIS a useful medium? |
| Representation | Does the geometry distort, overstate or simplify what is being represented? |
| Storage | Is the system recoverable, understandable and sustainable? |
| Access | Which people need which version, for what work and for how long? |
| Analysis | What new information could be derived by joining or modelling it? |
| Publication | What level of location detail serves this audience? What does the metadata reveal? |
| Sharing | What happens to copies once they leave the main system? |
| Preservation | Can future kaimahi understand the source, whakapapa and decision context? |
| Disposal | Which copies still serve a purpose and which have reached the end of their useful life? |
These are design questions, not a universal checklist. A marae asset register and a collection of whakapapa-linked ingoa wāhi do not need identical treatment.
Preserve meaning
A GIS feature can outlive the people who understand it.
For important spatial information, useful context can include:
- source and provenance
- date recorded or observed
- whānau, hapū, archive, report or other source relationship where useful
- the kaupapa or decision the information supported
- intended audiences or uses
- whether the geometry is exact, indicative, interpreted or surveyed
- uncertainty and known differences between sources
- relationships to other records
- notes needed by the next kaimahi to understand the record
This is discussed further in Whakapapa of data and Provenance and source checking.
Responsibility to future users
A system can work well today and be useless tomorrow.
Long-term care therefore includes ordinary practical things:
- more than one capable administrator
- documented recovery procedures
- independent backups
- portable or archival exports
- migration planning
- current account and contact records
- funding for continuing operation
- a clear handover when people change roles
The one-person problem matters because an iwi, hapū or Māori organisation cannot exercise much practical control over a system nobody else knows how to operate.
Responsibility can include access
Kaitiakitanga does not automatically mean maximum restriction.
Over-restriction can prevent whānau, rangatahi, taiao teams or researchers working with the organisation from receiving useful benefit. It can also create duplicate copies and make information less likely to survive because nobody knows it exists.
The useful question is often: what version and level of access fit this purpose and relationship?
That may produce several working or shared versions rather than one public/private switch. See Access and security and Publishing Māori GIS maps.
CARE is a useful comparison
The international CARE Principles combine Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility and Ethics. CARE is not a Māori framework, but it is useful comparative material because it treats Indigenous data governance as more than keeping people out of a database.
A small-project pattern
For one GIS project, keeping kaitiakitanga visible can be simple:
- Record the source, kaupapa and decision context.
- Keep original evidence separate from edited or public versions.
- Back up the working information independently.
- Match location detail to the purpose of each output.
- Write enough context for the next person to understand what they are looking at.
- Decide how the useful records will be carried forward when the project ends.
That is often more durable than adopting an elaborate framework that nobody has time to maintain.
Related pages
Sources
- Te Mana Raraunga — Principles of Māori Data Sovereignty
- Te Kāhui Raraunga — Māori Data Governance Model
- Global Indigenous Data Alliance — CARE Principles
Last reviewed: 26 August 2026