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Last reviewed: 16 August 2026

Decolonising the basemap

Every basemap makes choices.

It decides what is visible, what is named, what is prominent and what disappears at each scale. Roads may be thick and bright while streams are thin. Property boundaries may look precise while rohe are absent. English or official names may appear while local ingoa wāhi do not. Settlements can dominate marae. A commercial centre can receive more visual weight than the awa beside it.

None of this means a LINZ, Esri, Google or OpenStreetMap basemap is bad. It means the basemap is a designed representation made for particular purposes.

For Māori GIS, the useful habit is to stop treating the default basemap as neutral scenery.

Read the basemap before using it​

Before adding your own data, look at the background on its own.

Ask:

  • Which places are named?
  • Whose names are used?
  • What features are visually dominant?
  • What disappears when you zoom out?
  • Are cadastral or administrative lines presented more strongly than natural features?
  • Are awa, repo, takutai, maunga and other landscape features easy to read?
  • Are marae visible at a useful scale?
  • Are historic or locally used names missing?
  • Does the map make the area look primarily like property, transport, infrastructure or terrain?

The answers tell you what story the basemap is already telling before your layer appears.

A road map is not a whenua map​

Many web basemaps are designed for navigation. That is useful when the kaupapa is travel.

It is less useful when the kaupapa is:

  • restoration
  • mahinga kai
  • whakapapa
  • catchment health
  • cultural landscapes
  • historical change
  • marae resilience
  • whenua relationships

For those purposes, a map organised around roads, addresses and commercial labels may be the wrong starting point.

A different basemap might foreground:

  • awa and tributaries
  • catchments
  • coastlines
  • maunga and ridgelines
  • wetlands
  • marae
  • locally approved ingoa wāhi
  • terrain or hillshade
  • historical imagery

Cadastral lines carry a worldview too​

Parcel boundaries are essential for legal, planning and property tasks. They can also become visually dominant simply because they are easy to obtain and neatly structured.

A parcel layer says where the cadastral system has divided land. It does not say where cultural relationships begin and end.

If the map is for a kaupapa that is not primarily cadastral:

  • make parcel lines lighter
  • show them only when needed
  • avoid using them as the default unit for every analysis
  • consider catchments, landforms, coastlines, travel corridors or locally defined areas instead
  • label the cadastral layer as cadastral rather than simply boundaries

See Whenua and Awa as the organising geography.

Ingoa wāhi are not decoration​

Place names help carry history, movement, events, people and relationships.

A kaupapa-specific basemap can use approved ingoa wāhi as part of the structure of the map rather than as a translation layer added at the end.

Useful approaches include:

  • using locally confirmed Māori names as primary labels where appropriate
  • retaining more than one name when different names have legitimate provenance
  • recording official, recorded, historical and local status separately
  • displaying name histories in popups or companion material rather than forcing one label to carry everything
  • checking macrons and spelling against the right source

The New Zealand Gazetteer is an important official source, but not every Māori place name is in it and not every name in a local knowledge system needs to become official to be valid in that context.

See Who gets to name a place?.

Make the basemap for the kaupapa​

You do not need to build a national cartographic platform.

For one rohe or catchment, a useful local basemap can be quite simple.

Taiao basemap​

Consider:

  • subdued imagery or hillshade
  • awa and streams
  • catchment boundaries
  • wetlands
  • coast and estuaries
  • indigenous vegetation
  • marae and key community places

Whenua basemap​

Consider:

  • terrain
  • locally relevant ingoa wāhi
  • Māori land blocks where the kaupapa requires them
  • access routes
  • awa and coastlines
  • parcels only where legal context is needed

Hui basemap​

Consider:

  • familiar landmarks
  • marae
  • awa, roads and settlements needed for orientation
  • large readable place labels
  • very little background clutter

Historical basemap​

Consider:

  • georeferenced historic maps or imagery
  • historical place names
  • former waterways, wetlands, roads or coastlines
  • modern context kept light enough that the historical layer remains readable

Use visual hierarchy deliberately​

Decolonising a basemap is not achieved by colouring everything green or adding Māori motifs.

The meaningful change is deciding what deserves visual attention.

A simple test is to blur your eyes or zoom out. What still dominates?

If the map is about an awa but the motorway is the strongest line on the page, the visual hierarchy is fighting the kaupapa.

Be careful with replacement certainty​

Do not correct one problem by creating another.

Replacing every official or statutory layer with a single Māori polygon can still flatten complexity. A locally produced layer may be more appropriate for the kaupapa, but it also needs provenance, purpose and authority.

The goal is not to make the map look more Māori. It is to make the map honest about which representations are being used and why.

A practical QGIS workflow​

  1. Start with an empty project rather than a preconfigured web basemap.
  2. Add only the physical context needed for the kaupapa.
  3. Add approved local names and marae context.
  4. Add cadastral or administrative layers only when they answer a real question.
  5. Reduce the visual weight of external reference layers.
  6. Test the map with people who know the places.
  7. Remove anything that is present only because it was easy to download.
  8. Save the style as a reusable local basemap project or QGIS style set.

Sources and examples​

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