Māori GIS projects, platforms and infrastructure
Real projects are often more useful than generic advice. These examples show different approaches to archival research, marae discovery, iwi statistics, taiao monitoring, community planning, training and data infrastructure.
Project guide
| Project | Status checked 4 Sep 2026 | Particularly useful for | What to learn from it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kā Huru Manu | Active public cultural atlas | iwi archives, ingoa wāhi teams, Treaty and historical researchers | long-term place-name research, references, historical maps and an iwi-led public atlas |
| Māori Maps | Active public marae map | whānau, marae, public-map designers | a focused public map centred on helping people find marae |
| Takiwā | Active Māori-owned geospatial platform | iwi, hapū and taiao teams comparing platform options | Indigenous-oriented mapping, analysis, environmental applications and storytelling |
| Te Whata | Active iwi data platform | iwi planners, researchers and data teams | iwi-level data discovery, profiles, charts and maps without requiring everybody to be a GIS operator |
| Te Pā Tūwatawata | Active Māori-owned data-storage service | iwi/hapū data leads, GIS administrators, archives and backup planning | distributed Aotearoa storage, organisational control and S3-compatible infrastructure |
| Te Kahu o Taonui GIS resource | Active public GIS resource | Tai Tokerau kaitiaki, taiao teams and marae | connecting GIS concepts, public environmental data and kaitiaki work |
| Te Kete Kōrero o Ōhinemutu | Completed research case study | marae/village planning, planners and researchers | co-creating a geospatial tool around local planning questions and narratives |
| He Kete Mātauranga | Recorded project case study | hapū, land trusts and cultural heritage teams | a grassroots GIS built from historical imagery, Māori Land Court material and local project needs |
| Ngā Poutama Matawhenua | Current wānanga programme | learners, rangatahi and iwi/hapū practitioners | practical training using Aotearoa datasets and tools |
The status column describes what the linked resource is now. It does not imply that a completed case study is obsolete. Some of the strongest material on this page is valuable precisely because it documents how a project was designed and carried out.
Kā Huru Manu
Kā Huru Manu is the Ngāi Tahu cultural mapping project and digital atlas. Its public atlas contains more than a thousand traditional Māori place names, while the wider project draws on manuscripts, books, historical maps, newspapers and other archival sources.
For an iwi archive or ingoa wāhi team, the important lesson is the research architecture. A mapped name is connected to evidence and provenance rather than becoming an unexplained point. The public atlas is one product of a much larger cultural-mapping and archival programme.
Continue with Place names, Historical research and Archives to map.
Māori Maps
Māori Maps is a Māori-led public map for finding marae across Aotearoa. It currently lists more than 780 marae and provides a process for marae to update their own details.
Its Māori land layer is explicitly identified as an older Māori Land Court release and Māori Maps directs people to Pātaka Whenua for current land information. That is a useful design lesson: a convenient contextual layer can remain useful when its date and limitations are visible.
Continue with Marae GIS and Māori land data.
Takiwā
Takiwā is a Māori-owned geospatial platform with Indigenous and environmental applications. It is useful to iwi and hapū comparing desktop GIS, general cloud GIS and purpose-built Māori or Indigenous platforms.
Its value as an example is that platform design begins with relationships between people, place, environmental information and Indigenous knowledge rather than adding these concerns after the technology has been chosen.
Te Whata
Te Whata is an iwi data platform designed by Te Kāhui Raraunga. It combines profiles, indicators, charts and spatial views so that iwi data can be explored without requiring every user to operate desktop GIS software.
For iwi planning and strategy teams, it demonstrates that the right spatial product may be an accessible data service and narrative rather than another GIS installation.
Te Pā Tūwatawata
Te Pā Tūwatawata is a decentralised, iwi-designed and Māori-owned storage network developed by Te Kāhui Raraunga. Its public information describes seven distributed locations, New Zealand ownership, S3 compatibility and the ability for customers to choose where their data are physically stored.
For GIS teams, treat it as infrastructure rather than a replacement for QGIS, ArcGIS or a mapping application. Potential uses include GIS archives, imagery, backups, exported databases and other large digital collections where storage location and organisational control matter.
Continue with Should our hapū use the cloud?, Data residency is not data sovereignty and Backups and copies.
Te Kahu o Taonui and Me He Wai
The Te Kahu o Taonui GIS resource supports kaitiaki and iwi practitioners in Te Tai Tokerau with practical GIS concepts, public data and environmental examples. The previous tekahuotaonui.govt.nz link has been replaced with the organisation's current tkot.org.nz resource.
The resource describes Me He Wai, a Te Rarawa project supporting marae to manage environmental data and combine field monitoring with GIS to identify water-quality issues. It is a useful example of joining observations collected on the whenua with wider environmental datasets.
Continue with KoboToolbox for field work, Investigating an awa and Taiao data.
Te Kete Kōrero o Ōhinemutu
The 2026 paper Te Kete Kōrero o Ōhinemutu: the story of a cultural mapping tool documents a co-created geospatial tool for spatial planning at Ōhinemutu. It is particularly useful for marae communities, planners and researchers interested in how local narratives, geothermal features and planning questions can sit in one spatial system.
The lesson is the co-design process and its fit to Ōhinemutu's own planning questions, not a generic schema to copy everywhere.
See the fuller Ōhinemutu case study.
He Kete Mātauranga
He Kete Mātauranga: Bringing Whenua Stories to Life is a recorded Ngā Poutama wānanga with Keith Holswich of Ngāti Rāhiri. It describes a grassroots GIS built around the hapū's work, including historical imagery, Māori Land Court information, wāhi tapu and relationships with councils and industry.
For a hapū or Māori land trust wondering what an internal GIS could contain, it is one of the most concrete examples in the library.
What to borrow
Borrow methods, questions and design ideas. A project can show how to structure sources, train people, collect field observations, design public maps or connect historic records with modern geography. The whenua, whakapapa, kōrero and organisational arrangements remain specific to each kaupapa.
See also Videos and presentations, StoryMaps and interactive examples and Papers and research.
Last reviewed: 4 September 2026