Who decides what?
Māori GIS can involve knowledge holders, whānau, hapū, iwi, landowners, trustees, kaimahi, researchers, consultants and public agencies at the same time. Those roles are not interchangeable, and different decisions can sit in different places.
A useful question is not simply who owns the data? It is which decisions sit with which people or relationships for this kaupapa.
Different decisions can sit in different places
The person who supplied a coordinate may not manage the database. The person who manages the database may not decide what appears on a public map. A project funder may set contract conditions without deciding how locally held kōrero is represented.
Questions that help make those roles visible include:
- Who is involved in deciding whether the information is recorded at all?
- Who decides what level of spatial detail is useful for the kaupapa?
- Who decides what is shared internally, with partners or publicly?
- Who manages technical access to the system?
- Who maintains the source and provenance information?
- Who needs to be involved again if the purpose or audience changes?
- Are there overlapping or contested interests that need to remain visible?
There does not need to be one universal decision-maker for every part of the GIS.
Record enough context to avoid future guesswork
For important or sensitive layers, a short record of the decision context can help future kaimahi understand why the data exists and how it has been used.
| Field | What it records |
|---|---|
| Dataset or knowledge group | what the record covers |
| Kaupapa | why the information exists and what it supports |
| People or decision process | who was involved in the relevant decisions |
| Relationship to the knowledge | relevant whānau, hapū, iwi, kaitiaki or other connection |
| Intended uses | what the current version was prepared for |
| Intended audiences | who the current version was prepared for |
| Spatial detail | exact, generalised, descriptive or no map |
| Review trigger | what kind of change would prompt another discussion |
| Technical contact | who manages the system or dataset |
| Notes | provenance, contested interests, conditions or context that should travel with the record |
The point is to preserve context, not to turn tikanga into another database field.
Technical access is a separate question
GIS platforms still need practical user roles, group membership and access controls. Those settings answer a technical question: who can open, edit, administer or publish something in the system?
They do not by themselves answer questions about whakapapa, tikanga, representation or the relationships around the information.
In a small organisation one person may carry several roles. It is still useful to know which role they are acting in when a decision is made.
Overlapping interests
GIS likes clean boundaries. Relationships with whenua do not always fit that preference.
Where interests overlap or accounts differ, the GIS can preserve that complexity through:
- multiple representations
- source and date fields
- notes about kaupapa and context
- overlapping geometries where they are useful
- uncertainty fields rather than forced certainty
A technically tidy polygon does not necessarily represent a tidy history.
When the kaupapa changes
A working layer may later be proposed for a public StoryMap. A consultant may finish and hand the material back. A research dataset may become part of an operational system. AI or automated analysis may introduce a use that was not part of the original work.
Those changes are useful points to revisit the people, relationships and decisions around the data rather than assuming an earlier project setting answers every later question.
When the decision context is unclear
The GIS does not need to manufacture an answer.
Uncertainty can be recorded as uncertainty. A publication or reuse decision can remain open while the people connected to the kaupapa work through it. That is different from treating the GIS administrator, software setting or project contract as the default answer.
Related pages
Sources
- Te Mana Raraunga — Principles of Māori Data Sovereignty
- Te Kāhui Raraunga — Māori Data Governance Model
Last reviewed: 25 August 2026