Erena Mikaere, Principal Advisor for Te Pā Tūwatawata on the launch of Te Pā Tūwatawata in Wellington on Tuesday night time.
Photo: Supplied/Te Kāhui Raraunga
A brand new decentralised data storage network will put Māori data in Māori hands with the purpose of making certain Māori sovereignty does not “stop at the server door”.
Designed by Te Kāhui Raraunga, Te Pā Tūwatawata shall be out there to marae, hapū, iwi or different organisations who want to retailer their data throughout the safety of the Pā.
Principal advisor Erena Mikaere mentioned it was a industrial storage service designed particularly to fulfill the wants of iwi Māori, hapū and marae.
The venture was constructed on open supply expertise and led by Māori scientists, Māori engineers and grounded in tikanga Māori, she mentioned.
“Central to everything from its architecture, to its initial conceptions, to the values that drive it, and then also to our customer service delivery, it’s really about doing things in a very Māori way, based on a Te Ao Māori worldview. And so to that end, we didn’t just want to offer like an automated store with us and push this button and register your name and company and here’s the invoice type of style. It starts with a conversation, it starts with a kōrero, like all good things. And so that means that we can provide them with a really tailored service.”
Te Pā Tūwatawata supplies end-to-end encryption of data, each in transit and at relaxation, which Mikaere mentioned would imply solely the group who submitted the data to the platform would have the “keys” required to decrypt it.
“What it does is it provides a safe place for some of our data that we might consider, or that whānau and hapū, iwi might consider are some of our most sensitive sets of mātauranga. It provides a way in which we can protect that and ensure extra restriction, say over another data set, which perhaps isn’t as sensitive.”
Mikaere mentioned there had already been inquiries from iwi eager to advance their archiving aspirations.
“Much of our data, you know, if we think about some of our audio files and video files from back in the day, are held by others. And this is an opportunity for iwi to be that one true source of their information.”
The network hopes to make sure Māori sovereignty does not “stop at the server door”.
Photo: 123RF
A significant step towards data sovereignty
Mikaere mentioned the launch of Te Pātūwatawata was a significant step towards data sovereignty. A nation with out management of its digital infrastructure was a nation whose sovereignty “stops at the server door”, she mentioned.
“For us and all indigenous peoples really globally, sovereign digital systems aren’t and shouldn’t be a technical preference. They are a precondition for self-determination, for rangatiratanga.”
Of all of the layers inside a digital ecosystem, storage was essentially the most foundational, it decided who held the data and who may entry. Without it each app, platform, or AI mannequin, particularly AI fashions educated on indigenous data, stay weak to overseas jurisdiction and to company pursuits, she mentioned.
“There’s a track record of others treating our data as a resource to extract, not to steward and not to protect, but to extract. You know, the same way that land was extracted, and the same way that language was extracted, and in the same way that children were even extracted from the arms of their whānau and placed into systems that were never built for them. So the pattern of that isn’t new, the medium is. Te Pātuwatawata provides a solution to stop that.”
Mikaere mentioned it was already occurring, with massive AI fashions giving solutions in te reo Māori, or solutions about issues in Te Ao Māori, which weren’t essentially true.
“One of the other significant solutions that we must ensure is having Māori governance over the data. Because… I’m not sure if everybody truly understands that AI is built on data. So without data governance, there is no AI governance. Without data infrastructure, there is no AI infrastructure. So if we can get data infrastructure and data governance right first, then that goes a long way to ensuring safe and ethical AI.”
Te Kāhui Raraunga had produced a Māori Data Governance Model and extra not too long ago a Māori AI Governance Framework which Mikaere mentioned supplied nice blueprints for a way to make sure security as issues continued to alter.
“The pace that people are trying to build AI that is not for us, that is not cognisant of the environment either, is really scary. And so the faster that we can become more aware and the faster that we can have and buy into solutions like this, which really are about protection and more than that, and they’re about leveraging off of the opportunity and the potential that AI brings, because it does, but only in the right hands and only with the right leadership and governance behind it.”
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