"Since We Became the Masters"

Issues for Iwi in Information Technology

Robyn Kamira (BSocSci, PGDip)

This presentation will discuss approaches that support us, as Maori [5], as masters of our knowledge – when someone else is controlling the technology. It will discuss ways to increase protection and support for intellectual and cultural property and addresses gaps in ethical and privacy laws and policy. It presents ideas about kaitiakitanga[6] of information technology systems, ownership & access of data, Iwi as first beneficiaries of information systems, and the concept of ‘collective’ privacy as a valid form of control for grouped data on Iwi or Hapu.

Context

Two hundred years ago the missionaries arrived in Aotearoa bringing with them bibles, pens and paper, and thus, for Maori, one of our first great encounters with European technology; namely, the written word. This was to become the main source of history and knowledge for many descendents.

Did the missionaries and other historians have the cultural and spiritual base to record knowledge faithfully? Would they have jeopardised their goals to recruit new members to their churches by reinforcing a history and spiritual belief that was in direct conflict with Christianity? Many now believe that the knowledge was interpreted to support a religious Christian agenda [7]. In essence, indigenous knowledge was aligned to a foreign way of understanding. It was validated or discarded to suit an international strategy of colonisation by the English Crown. The English were attempting to master the New World by conquering both geography and knowledge systems. This, along with the other experiences of colonisation during the last 200 years, has left us with a weakened and sometimes inaccurate knowledge base from which to understand who we are, where we have been, and where we are going.

So why is this of interest today? Today, Maori continue to unravel the flawed histories and knowledge that was created during the last 200 years with the technology of the day – the pen and paper. Today, information technology [8] is a tool for storing and interpreting indigenous knowledge for a virtual audience. That is, an audience that has no geography, no common culture, and no stake in whether or not the information is intact or faithfully recorded - the Internet and its global village. Information technology has become a modern, exciting and rapid tool for colonisation. Once again, we are experiencing a significant impact on our knowledge that is being facilitated by those who control information technology.

While Iwi around the country are developing uses for information technology at a steady pace in support of their tino rangatiratanga [9] other organisations are building multi-million dollar information computer systems that record and manipulate information about Maori with astounding speed.

• What happens when whakapapa [10] goes online – and it is yours?
• What is the responsibility of agencies [11] that use information on Iwi to confirm once again the ongoing poor state of its social, economic, educational and health position in society – and then do nothing about it?
• Who decides what information is valid or acceptable when an electronic encyclopaedia [12] on the ‘Maori’ is designed – sanitised for the tourists, and standardised for technical ease?

Three Stories

(The following ‘stories’ are drawn from actual recent experiences)

STORY ONE: Small whanau system

Iwi, Hapu, Whanau [13] or individuals may have unique views about who accesses traditional knowledge. Likewise, different views on the nature of ‘tapu’ [14] on that knowledge vary. This whanau tended towards restricting access to traditional knowledge. The whanau had a series of manuscripts of written genealogy and histories that were recorded by a tohunga [15] – and an ancestor. In short, the decades of events around the manuscripts resulted in the direct descendency line knowing little about its history, background or the ways of the "old people" – knowledge that would have been traditionally passed down through generations in pre-European times. Access to the manuscripts had instead been granted and assumed by others.

Besides the whanau there were three key players:

• The Museum – copied the originals and distributed copies, lost some of the manuscripts, assumed ownership and decision-making rights.
• The Church– (both formal and informal members) added ‘names’ to the tops of whakapapa lines to prove a Christian link exists, decided to build a computer database to store and disseminate the whakapapa.
• The Universities – used material from the manuscripts for publications such as theses, assumed guardianship rights and decided who could access the books.

The key players performed their roles without the knowledge of the direct descendents until recently. Once the whanau discovered the activities, the original manuscripts were forcibly removed from the museum, copies removed from other institutions, and access stopped. A dispute about ownership and threats of police action were short-lived as the museum could not uphold its position as legal owners of the manuscripts.

What were the issues?

• Ownership
• Access
• Whanau needed common understanding of its responsibilities around kaitiakitanga
• Whanau needed common understanding of the intentions of the ancestor who wrote them
• New mechanisms for protection and care of the manuscripts (draft template available electronically or hard copy)
• Ongoing and future use of manuscripts and treatment of knowledge

STORY TWO: Maori Land Court

The Maori Land Court (MLC) has the largest written archive of whakapapa and Maori history that dates back to 1865. Hearing applicants and counter-applicants gave genealogies, locations of sacred sites and histories as proof of ownership (or evidence) and these now form the Court’s record. The record is public and could be accessed by requesting information from regional MLC offices. However, this was a time consuming and sometimes difficult process for researchers. Recently, the MLC developed a computerised database to hold information about multiple-owned Maori land titles. This database would show ‘succession’ information with names of owners that in time would create a series of genealogy. Initially, Internet access was not proposed but could be an option in the future. As a result of the introduction of information technology, and because of the age and condition of the original records, some were sent to the government’s National Archives in Wellington. Many Maori treated the original records as tapu and so maintained that the documents should have stayed "home" amongst the descendents of the original Court applicants. The question of ownership also emerged but was not resolved. The decision was made to remove many of the records despite protests.

The decision to build the new computer system was made in the main by the MLC executive management. Iwi participation in the decision was not well pursued and consultation included discussion with the government’s Ministry of Maori Development (Te Puni Kokiri) and an internal document that attempted to identify issues for Iwi.

What were the issues?

• No Iwi consultation or participation in the decision – low level consultation after the decision was made
• Ownership of intellectual property not agreed
• Access to the record was always public but through information technology it would be more accessible. This was for some, contrary to beliefs about traditional knowledge
• The creation and access of whakapapa as a by-product of the database
• Originals considered to be tapu were sent to Wellington
• No-one monitoring future decisions

STORY THREE: kidZnet

The kidZnet project was a proposed Internet based health information system on children from the ages of 0 to 14 years in Hamilton and Rotorua. It was a tool that would increase the safe treatment and care of children by sharing limited information amongst health service providers. Caregivers and parents had the option of making their children’s records available to various health providers including Iwi health services, general practices, midwives, Plunket and hospitals.

The multiple interests of all stakeholders in kidZnet had the potential to submerge Maori interests. Therefore, a participative approach was proposed for Iwi and Maori health providers and consumer groups. It attempted to raise the profile of Maori interests towards potential health gains for Maori children. The process included enabling Iwi groups to have input to the project while it was still developing rather than after it had been built and was running. While this had yet to be proven as effective for Iwi, it had flaxroots input from the community (Iwi and Hapu) that allowed the development of new approaches to intellectual property and technology.

Individual data on a Maori child was addressed through the Privacy Act 1993 and the Health Information Privacy Code 1994. However, grouped data that included statistical information obtained by gathering groups of individual records on children was not addressed by legislation or policy. Examples of grouped data are published by government ministries such as Statistics NZ and are found in regular reports published by the Ministry of Health. It would be possible through the kidZnet database to group large numbers of records pertaining to Iwi, Hapu, or Maori. The advantages of obtaining statistical information were those health service providers and their funders would be better informed about where to target services. However, knowing this alone was not sufficient to achieve a health gain for Maori children. Maori health providers wanted to know how this type of information would be acted upon so that the health of Maori children would be protected and advanced? Who should decide what data should be collected andby whom, and for whose benefit?

What were the issues?

• How Maori health service providers can actively participate in kidZnet?
• Ownership – kidZnet the system, intellectual property, collective ownership, ownership at lowest level
• Who will look after kidZnet – governance, kaitiakitanga
• Collective privacy for Whanau, Hapu and Iwi
• Maori children as first beneficiaries

MOVING TOWARDS MASTERY

Maori are often passive participants in information technology and generally do not make key decisions. This is in part because Maori do not have roles in information technology management and are under-represented in information technology fields such as computer science. There appears to be a need for Maori to understand information technology projects and know who the stakeholders are and their roles. Knowing who they are and what they do means knowing their limitations - especially around decision-making.

What can we do to protect data, information and knowledge when others have control? The approach used in the kidZnet project was to identify the ethical and cultural issues and then incorporate them into the project’s development and ongoing management. The purpose was to promote, protect and validate the assets (knowledge and skills) that Maori and Iwi health providers contribute to the project and especially towards a health gain for Maori children.

The following sections are a combination of summarised extracts from the kidZnet cultural and ethical discussion document [16] and other discussion.

A framework for ethical and cultural considerations

Legislation and policy for addressing Iwi requirements and needs around intellectual and cultural property are inadequate or do not exist. There was a need to develop new policies for the kidZnet project. The framework used was the Treaty of Waitangi [17] - as a local and living model for Iwi to apply tino rangatiratanga and by which the appropriateness of decisions made during the development and management of kidZnet could be measured.

In particular:

• Article II of the Treaty guarantees Maori control and enjoyment of their valued possessions – tangible and intangible. This includes the health of their children.
• Article III of the Treaty affords Maori the attainment of equal human and social rights.

Could Maori health providers participate in kidZnet?

Participation by Maori health providers in the kidZnet project was important because a critical mass of participation was necessary to ensure the project’s effectiveness. The project needed to achieve a high degree of completeness so that children’s health needs could be identified – no matter where they went for care. In addition, Maori children had been identified as having greater health needs than other sectors in society. The kidZnet project needed to include Maori children in any health benefits and not further disadvantage them.

However, it was possible that a serious participation problem existed amongst Iwi health providers because of infrastructure barriers such as lack of equipment and skills, or the inability to invest in technology. Some believed that full participation by Iwi health providers should be supported by the Health Funding Authority as the government funders of kidZnet (ie. training, equipment, upgrades, telephone, security, modems, management and technical support, etc.)

Ownership

While we might resist accepting a western concept of ownership it was now being forced upon us through technology. There were two aspects when considering ownership of kidZnet:

• The physical ownership (ie. the computer information system, equipment, database, etc).
• The intellectual ownership (ie. the knowledge and information).

The physical ownership of kidZnet did not imply intellectual ownership. Therefore, even if a particular organisation paid for the computer consultants, computers, printers, modems, administration, etc., it could not then assume the right to make decisions about the type of data that would be collected and what would happen to it.

Intellectual property [18]

Maori stakeholder input about ownership of intellectual property would be critical for ‘uptake’ of kidZnet. If the source of data were clear, then the intellectual property would also be clear. Maori stakeholders had intellectual property interests in the data and information contributed to, drawn from, and produced by kidZnet, particularly if grouped data was to identify ethnicity, Iwi and Hapu.

Intellectual property assertions included:

• Maori will define their intellectual property
• Maori will protect, promote, and develop intellectual property about and for Maori

Ownership at lowest level

An individual child and then the whanau owned his/her record first and foremost. Then a Hapu, an Iwi or a Waka [19] may own non-personal grouped data. For example, data pertaining to specific Iwi groups were perceived to belong to that Iwi and not its umbrella Waka group. This did not necessarily mean that an Iwi group would not support an application by its Waka group to access data about its children. However, it may wish to confirm its children as first beneficiaries.

Collective ownership

Collective ownership was not a new concept to Maori and this type of arrangement amongst a range of stakeholders would most likely be acceptable to Maori health providers. Collective ownership still did not imply intellectual ownership of data about Maori children. Some asked how ownership would be transferred from the Health Funding Authority to Iwi and the rest of the community. There would be strong resistance to government ownership.

Who would look after kidZnet?

The establishment of a Kaitiaki [20] or Governance group was proposed. The formal structure of the group had yet to be defined. However, it was envisaged that it would administer the ethical and custodial guidelines and consider applications for the release and use of grouped data.

The following were of importance to Maori:

• The membership and appointment of the Kaitiaki group was significant. The Maori stakeholders should determine the appropriate type of Maori representation.
  
  
• The position of the Kaitiaki group as a part of, or aside from, the Governance group was critical. The Kaitiaki group may comprise of all of the stakeholder groups (Maori and non-Maori), or just Maori.
  
  
• The Maori members of the Kaitiaki group should have decision-making powers and be informed on all issues not just perceived ‘Maori’ ones. This would ensure Maori were defining what is of interest to Maori and would prevent inappropriate filtering of information.

What is collective privacy?

Privacy can encompass both the individual and the collective. An individual can have his/her privacy protected via the Privacy Act 1993. Whereas, privacy for a Whanau, Hapu and Iwi is not currently supported by legislation. It would be a key issue when data collection occurred on identifiable groups that wished to manage and control data about themselves.

Maori children as first beneficiaries

If Maori children and their whanau provided data then those children should benefit from that data. Potentially, there were some barriers to Maori children being the first beneficiaries of data collections. For example, limited access by Maori health providers to kidZnet due to insufficient computer equipment or research skills. Some Maori health providers would need to rely on others to provide information, or may only have access to information that had been collected for other purposes and which did not focus on Maori children, nor contain the detail required to initiate effective action.

Mechanisms to promote Maori children as first beneficiaries included:

• Protocols around data collection and ensuring benefits to Maori children.
• The development of initiatives (beneficial action) when grouped data about Maori children was identified.

Why WE need to be masters of our information

Maori need to be masters of information and the technology because of the potential loss of knowledge through irresponsible or inappropriate use that can undermine Maori aspirations. Maori are being redefined to fit the limitations of technology. There are numerous examples where Maori information or protocols have been compromised due to a perceived technical limitation, which cannot always be justified. As an example, an early proposal for data fields for the kidZnet project suggested that a short list of selected Iwi be offered on the database so that a computer search function could be easily executed. The list would provide a limited number of options enabling more simplicity when the data was being analysed or reported. These perceived limitations around technology were overcome easily with the inclusion of an ‘open’ field that could accept textual data without the restrictions. This ensured people could define their Hapu and Iwi affiliations in whatever way they chose – an act of tino rangatiratanga.

The master and the slave

The master-slave analogy is from the computer science field and refers to the relationship between one component and another. Mastery implies control and so the following is an alternative to the previous list of stakeholders and roles and incorporates more Iwi decision-making opportunities.

Stakeholders in the proactive sense:

Ideally, masters will negotiate rather than consult with the funders and project management because they recognise their intellectual property as an asset. They will ensure they identify stakeholder roles and areas of control so that decisions are being made at the appropriate levels. In addition, masters will build their information technology capacity in fields that increase their understanding of both technical and management issues. Shifts like those in the stakeholder relationships will increase the control, integrity and protection of information.

Since we became the masters – a legacy for our children

This presentation is entitled ‘Since We Became the Masters’ in anticipation that the loss of knowledge experienced during the last 200 years will not be repeated. It is in anticipation that the legacy left for our descendents will be one where the knowledge that remains today has been protected for tomorrow.

No reira, e te Iwi… Ko tenei taku nei mihi ake ki a koutou me o tatou tupuna, tohunga ranei. Ko te moemoea, ka tu tonu te matauranga mo ake tonu. Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

REFERENCES

Durie, M. (1996). Maori Participation in a Reformed Health System, Health Manager Journal.

Jackson, M. (1997). Intellectual Property Rights and Implications for Maori: An Interview with Moana Jackson in Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights: Economics, Politics & Colonisation, Vol. 2., Tamaki Makaurau and Moko Productions, Auckland.

Kamira, R. (December 1998). An Ethical Framework for Cultural Issues: Discussion Document for kidZnet, Kirikiriroa.

Kamira, R. (November 1999). The kidZnet Project - Guiding Cultural & Ethical Issues for Iwi, Kirikiriroa.

Mander, J. (1991). In the Absence of the Sacred The Failure of Technology & the Survival of the Indian Nations, San Francisco.

Mead, ATP. (1997). Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific in Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights: Economics, Politics & Colonisation, Vol. 2., Tamaki Makaurau and Moko Productions, Auckland.

Mead, ATP. Nga Tikanga, Nga Taonga: Cultural and Intellectual Property - The Rights for Indigenous Peoples, Te Tari Rangahau O Te Matauranga Maori, Te Whare Wananga O Tamaki Makaurau.

Mikaere, A. (1995). The Balance Destroyed: The Consequences for Maori Women of the Colonisation of Tikanga Maori, Thesis, University of Waikato.

Ministry of Health. (March 1997). Whaia Te Whanaungatanga: Oranga. The Wellbeing of Maori Whanau, A Discussion Document, Public Health Group.

Orange, C. (1987). The Treaty of Waitangi, Wellington.

Pihema, L., Waerea-I-Te-Rangi Smith, C. (Eds.) (1997). Cultural And Intellectual Property Rights: Economics, Politics & Colonisation, Vol. 2., Tamaki Makaurau And Moko Productions, Auckland.

Putahi Associates Ltd. (February 1999). Maori and the Patenting of Life Form Inventions: An Information Paper Produced by the Patenting of Life Forms Focus Group for the Ministry of Commerce, Patenting of Life Forms Focus Group, Wellington.

Simpson Grierson Law. (July 1999). Privacy Impact Assessment and Commentary on the kidZnet Child Health Information Project.

Stevens, R. (April 1998). Medical Records Databases: Just What You Need?, Prepared for the Privacy Commissioner, Auckland.

Te Puni Kokiri. (1994). Mana Tangata: Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 1993, Wellington.

Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck) (1958). The Coming of the Maori, Wellington, (p526).

Yates-Smith, GR Aroha. (1998). Hine! E Hine!: Rediscovering the Feminine in Maori Spirituality, Thesis, University of Waikato.

Footnotes:

[5] Refers to Iwi, Hapu and Whanau or any other grouping such as 'urban Maori'. [back]

[6] Guardianship and governance and for Maori it is also a responsibility that is passed down through generations. [back]

[7] See references at end of this paper especially Te Rangi Hiroa, Annie Mikaere, Aroha Yates-Smith. [back]

[8] Information technology refers here to computer and other communications technology and includes the Internet. [back]

[9] Control over ones destiny and can include political autonomy. [back]

[10] Genealogical information including stories and histories considered to be sacred and usually restricted access. Eg. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Family Search - Internet Genealogical Services - http://www.familysearch.com/ [back]

[11] New Zealand Government Online: http://www.govt.nz/ [back]

[12] Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia [back]

[13] Extended family. [back]

[14] Tapu is a form of restriction that applies to things and knowledge considered to be of spiritual importance. [back]

[15] A person of exceptional expertise. [back]

[16] Reference under Kamira 1999 at end of this paper. At the time of writing, the kidZnet project was still in development and the Iwi participation process was still ongoing. The ideas and approaches that follow have yet to be tested. Hard copies available. [back]

[17] Founding treaty signed in 1840 between the English Crown and various Hapu of Aotearoa [back]

[18] Intellectual property is knowledge created from the mind. [back]

[19] Waka refers to a collection of Iwi based on geographic boundaries and on the 'migration' and canoe histories. [back]

[20] The proposed Kaitiaki group would have caretaker/guardian responsibilities for kidZnet [back]