MATAURANGA MAORI DIGITISATION PROJECT

WHO

SME leadership and stakeholders (Ngamanawa Inc) and Founders (Ahau)

WHEN

June 2020

VENTURE / ENTERPRISE

Mātauranga Māori digitisation and digital enablement

DESCRIPTION

Ngamanawa Incorporated are developing their infrastructure and capabilities with digital tools in partnership with Ahau Ltd to greater manage and preserve their traditional mātauranga, identity and create greater access and transfer of this information.

PROBLEM

Tribal organisations and whānau trusts like Ngamanawa Inc are entrusted with the purpose of developing their communities, growing their tribal asset base, and maintaining their cultural identity for the benefit of thousands of shareholders – their people.

They have to manage group decision making, open communication and activity, shareholder returns, maintain an accurate representation of members who often cannot be located or sometimes cannot be identified. This is time consuming, complex, and often cost-prohibitive and normally results in burdening resources and expense, detracting away from the opportunity for investment in education, community wellbeing, cultural identity and economic growth.

OBJECTIVES

Transferable skills acquired by all those involved while the project is developed iteratively. Rangatahi supported to plan the activities, fully scope the stories to be collected, travel with kaumatua into the bush to record their stories. Once back at the studio, edit stories and videos, verify data, archive, connect them to stakeholders and store them in Ahau’s Open Source software repository. Connect generations to and through stories, stories to the land and land to future generations through the co-creation of Ngamanawa Inc’s digital twin.

HYPOTHESES

By working together as a collective, as part of an agile, customer-driven lean-startup research and development technology project Ahau – a startup developing a secure, digital, open-source technology platform, and Ngamanawa Inc will co-create a culturally and contextually appropriate digital repository for the incorporation's digital assets, design digital tools with high utility and develop opportunities for the social, environmental and economic future with digital capability and increased digital capacity.

PROGRESS

Project is in four phases. Stage 1: Setup commenced 16th June. Project team engaged.

IMPACT

Rangatahi will be learning matauranga Māori and strengthening their relationship with the land. In addition, there will be the development of a range of STEM skills including GPS, scientific documentation and verification, sampling, video/audio capture, data storage, maintenance, retrieval/security, soft and hardware development, geography and geology, amongst others.

Rangatiratanga, intergenerational knowledge transfer, digital enablement, sovereign identity, cultural development, economic equality, social justice, environment.

OUTCOMES TO DATE

Contract employment x5 Manawhenua – Ngati Hangarau, 2x Ahau team, 4x Whanau/Professional service providers

TO DO

Co-create tikanga for rangatahi and kaumatua to observe, in order to digitally capture and curate, kaupapa and korero, whakapapa and situational and environmental data. Footage to be shot on the land/in the bush where it’s determined it is best to capture the heart of the mauri. Data, information, knowledge and wisdom to be preserved and secured using distributed technology, protocol, permissions to enable the whanau connected to the Incorporation and incorporation on behalf of its whanau (shareholders) to leverage its use in the ‘knowledge economy’ to create income and outcomes for them and their communities now and in the future.