Source library
This library identifies the principal sources behind the Māori Data Sovereignty for GIS section. It prioritises Māori-led organisations, iwi sources, primary historical and government evidence, peer-reviewed research, recognised Indigenous frameworks and primary technical documentation.
Vendor documentation is used for product facts, not as independent evidence that a product satisfies Māori Data Sovereignty.
Māori foundations
Te Mana Raraunga — Principles of Māori Data Sovereignty
Foundational Māori-led principles concerning rangatiratanga, jurisdiction, accountability, collective benefit and Māori rights and interests in data. Strong conceptual authority. It does not prescribe a specific GIS or cloud architecture.
Te Kāhui Raraunga — Māori Data Governance Model
Operational Māori data-governance work developed for application across organisations and government. Highly relevant to GIS governance roles and institutional practice, although not a geospatial technical standard.
Te Kāhui Raraunga — Iwi Data Sharing Guidance
Iwi Data Sharing Guidance, 9 June 2026
A preliminary Te Kāhui Raraunga position and decision framework for requests to share individual-level iwi data. It addresses benefit, authority, consent, linkage with other datasets, AI use, iwi infrastructure and capability, storage disclosure, access through the data pipeline, disposal and repatriation. It is directly relevant to Māori GIS sharing agreements where individual-level or otherwise sensitive iwi information is involved.
Te Kāhui Raraunga — Relational Infrastructures for Sovereign Data Storage
Relational Infrastructures for Sovereign Data Storage, 19 May 2026
A Te Kāhui Raraunga and Indigenous Data Alliance resource examining how digital infrastructure can be shaped by Indigenous processes and values. It provides an important Māori-led counterpoint to treating infrastructure choices as only technical hosting decisions.
Te Kāhui Raraunga — Te Pā Tūwatawata
Te Pā Tūwatawata launch, 20 May 2026
Primary Māori organisational source for the launch of a decentralised, iwi-designed, Māori-owned storage network. Te Kāhui Raraunga describes seven pilot Points of Presence and S3-compatible encrypted storage with customer-selected locations. Use this as evidence of a current Māori-owned infrastructure option and organisational position, not as an independent comparative assessment of cost, performance or risk.
Te Kāhui Raraunga — Māori AI Governance
Current Māori-led work on artificial intelligence, governance and Māori data. Important for the rapidly changing AI/GIS section.
Māori mapping and case studies
Ngāi Tahu — Kā Huru Manu
Primary iwi source for a long-running cultural-mapping programme connecting archival evidence, Papatipu Rūnaka, traditional place names and public mapping.
Te Kete Kōrero o Ōhinemutu
Walker, Dionisio, Parkinson, Kingi and McDonald, Te Kete Kōrero o Ōhinemutu: the story of a cultural mapping tool, AlterNative. DOI
Peer-reviewed Māori cultural-GIS case covering co-creation, community-led planning, cultural data structures, access and digital capability.
Māori Maps
Māori Maps and About
Primary organisation source for the national marae gateway administered by Te Pōtiki National Trust. Useful for public information architecture and the distinction between a digital gateway and direct relationships with marae.
Te Whata
Iwi-oriented data platform associated with Te Kāhui Raraunga. Useful for iwi data narratives, Māori-controlled access and relationships with Crown-originated statistics.
Historical Aotearoa evidence
Waitangi Tribunal — Te Roroa / Waimamaku 2
Case study: Kaharau and Te Taraire
Primary official Tribunal educational source for the competing survey plans associated with Waimamaku 2. Exceptional relevance to provenance, exclusions, version control and authoritative maps.
Manatū Taonga NZHistory — Waitara
Official historical account of the disputed sale, survey and events preceding the First Taranaki War. Useful for understanding surveying as an institutional assertion of authority rather than a neutral measurement step.
Te Ara — Māori and maps of colonisation
Māori and maps of colonisation
Authoritative secondary synthesis covering survey resistance, military mapping and the role of mapping in colonial land systems.
Toitū Te Whenua LINZ / Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa
New Zealand Geographic Board and Treaty settlement place names
Primary government sources for official geographic naming and restoration or correction of Māori place names through Treaty settlements.
New Zealand government and law/policy
Digital Government — Sharing Māori data
Current public-service guidance recognising Māori data interests and the Māori Data Governance Model. Relevant to government sharing, residency and due diligence.
Digital Government — Cloud Jurisdictional Risk guidance
Cloud Jurisdictional Risk guidance
Strong primary source distinguishing residency, jurisdiction, territorial reach and cloud risk. Particularly useful for avoiding simplistic onshore/offshore conclusions.
Digital Government — Cloud First
Cloud adoption policy and strategy
Current government cloud policy. Useful for understanding public-service preferences and the requirement to assess risk and te ao Māori considerations.
Archives New Zealand — cloud services
Primary guidance showing that statutory information-management responsibilities continue when government records move into cloud services.
Office of the Privacy Commissioner — third-party providers
Working with third-party providers
Current privacy guidance covering organisational responsibility, overseas providers and practical control. Privacy law is narrower than Māori Data Sovereignty, but important where personal information is involved.
Stats NZ — 2023 Census
2023 Census and Māori and iwi population concepts
Primary source for the failure to publish official 2018 Census iwi counts and the later 2023 Census iwi-affiliation design and publication context.
International Indigenous governance
Global Indigenous Data Alliance — CARE
Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility and Ethics. Designed to complement rather than replace FAIR. Highly relevant to authorised openness and research benefit.
First Nations Information Governance Centre — OCAP
First Nations framework from Canada: Ownership, Control, Access and Possession. Possession is especially useful for GIS because it exposes the difference between a formal claim and practical custody/control.
Local Contexts
Local Contexts and Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels
Indigenous metadata/protocol infrastructure that demonstrates richer community-specific provenance and use expectations than ordinary public/private or copyright fields.
Nunatsiavut research data return
Snook et al., Good data relations key to Indigenous research sovereignty: A case study from Nunatsiavut, Ambio. DOI
Empirical evidence that collected data were not returned in roughly two-thirds of examined projects. Exceptional relevance to GIS research contracts and usable data-return requirements.
Australian Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data
Australian Government — Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data
Co-designed public-sector framework intended to increase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander agency over government-held data. Useful as an institutional comparison, not a Māori framework.
Sámi Ownership and Data Access
Sámi Council — SODA principles
Sámi-led principles covering collective benefit, authority, ownership/control, responsibility and ethics across the data lifecycle.
UNDRIP
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Wider international rights setting. Articles 25, 26 and 31 are particularly relevant to lands, territories, resources, cultural heritage and traditional knowledge. UNDRIP does not prescribe GIS architecture.
Spatial privacy and masking
GBIF — Georeferencing Best Practices
Strong technical source for coordinate precision, uncertainty, sensitive-location generalisation and documenting spatial transformations. Particularly useful for the pattern of retaining precise authoritative data while generalising publication derivatives.
MaskMy.XYZ
Swanlund, Schuurman & Brussoni, MaskMy.XYZ: An easy-to-use tool for protecting location privacy, Transactions in GIS.
Peer-reviewed technical research on geomasking and the privacy/utility trade-off.
Geomasking identification risk
Seidl, Jankowski & Clarke, research in Geographical Analysis on geomasking and identification risk.
Useful evidence that masking can create both privacy benefits and false-location associations. Supports caution around random displacement.
GIS and database technology
QGIS
QGIS documentation — creating layers
Primary technical documentation for current QGIS and GeoPackage workflows. Product facts only.
PostgreSQL and PostGIS
PostgreSQL licence and PostGIS
Primary technical sources for the open database stack. Open-source licensing reduces one form of vendor dependency but does not remove administration or capability requirements.
Esri — ArcGIS Online exports and publishing
Allow data exports from hosted feature layers, Publish hosted feature layers and Create hosted views
Primary vendor documentation. Important for understanding that visible export controls are not absolute anti-copy controls and that displayed filtering is not necessarily the same as reducing the data uploaded to the hosted source.
Cloud infrastructure
AWS New Zealand Region
AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region
Primary vendor source confirming current New Zealand regional infrastructure. Use only for infrastructure facts, not as independent sovereignty assurance.
Microsoft New Zealand North
Microsoft Learn — Azure regions and availability zones
Primary vendor documentation confirming New Zealand North as an Azure region with availability-zone support. Use for current infrastructure facts only.
GCDO Public Cloud Data Centre Certification
Certified facilities and areas
Government certification information for eligible public-cloud data-centre facilities and areas. Certification is evidence of specified government controls, not a Māori Data Sovereignty endorsement.
Artificial intelligence
Māori Algorithmic Sovereignty
Brown et al. (2024), Māori Algorithmic Sovereignty: Idea, Principles, and Use, Data Science Journal.
Peer-reviewed Māori scholarship extending sovereignty questions into algorithms, systemic bias and Māori authority over algorithmic systems.
Te Kāhui Raraunga — Māori AI Governance Framework
Māori-led framework extending the Māori Data Governance Model to AI systems and public-sector use. Treat this as a primary Māori governance source for AI alongside the peer-reviewed algorithmic-sovereignty literature.
How to use this library
For consequential claims, follow the original source rather than citing this page as though it were the primary evidence. Technology, vendor, AI and government-policy claims should be rechecked periodically because they change faster than historical sources.
If a source contradicts another strong source, preserve the disagreement rather than silently combining the two positions.
Evidence status
This resource distinguishes:
- established fact — supported by strong primary or peer-reviewed evidence
- organisational position — what an iwi, Māori organisation, government agency or vendor states
- evidence-supported interpretation — synthesis from several sources
- practitioner experience — clearly identified first-hand observation
- site recommendation — practical guidance developed from the evidence
- open question — not yet adequately answered by the available literature
See What we still do not know.
Last reviewed: 16 August 2026
Connect the library to the map
Use Provenance and source checking to record what a source can support, and the spatial data catalogue to locate current public datasets. For historical material, Archives to map shows how the source register can continue into a GIS layer without losing page and record references.