Te Mana Raraunga Māori Data Sovereignty Network

Te Mana Raraunga (TMR) is Aotearoa New Zealand's national Māori data sovereignty network, founded in 2015 with the mission "Our data, our sovereignty, our future." The network asserts that data about Māori communities is tāonga — a treasured resource — subject to Māori governance rights under Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. TMR is a founding member network of the Global Indigenous Data Alliance and contributed directly to the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance — the international standard now used alongside the FAIR Principles in research and AI governance contexts globally.

Charter

Te Mana Raraunga adopted its founding charter on April 5, 2016, at the second TMR hui held at Papakura Marae, Auckland. The charter rests on three foundational statements:

• Data as tāonga: "Data is a living tāonga and is of strategic value to Māori"
• Māori data defined: "Māori data refers to data produced by Māori or that is about Māori and the environments we have relationships with"
• Rights basis: "Māori data is subject to the rights articulated in the Treaty of Waitangi and the UN's Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples"

The charter commits the network to seven action areas: asserting Māori rights and interests in data; safeguarding and protecting Māori data; ensuring quality and integrity in Māori data collection; advocating for Māori involvement in data repository governance; supporting Māori data infrastructure and security development; facilitating te reo Māori language data capacity; and supporting sustainable Māori digital businesses and innovations.

Six Principles

The charter establishes six core principles of Māori data sovereignty, each grounded in te reo Māori conceptual vocabulary:

• Rangatiratanga (Authority) — Māori communities hold the right to govern their own data
• Whakapapa (Relationships) — data exists within webs of kinship and ecological relationship
• Whanaungatanga (Obligations) — responsibilities flow between communities and their data
• Kotahitanga (Collective Benefits) — data must produce benefits for Māori collectively
• Manaakitanga (Reciprocity) — data stewardship requires respectful, reciprocal engagement
• Kaitiakitanga (Guardianship) — Māori are long-term guardians of data, not transient owners of an asset

Founding Membership and CARE Principles

Te Mana Raraunga was among the three founding member networks of the Global Indigenous Data Alliance — constituted at the July 2019 Oñati workshop alongside the Maiam nayri Wingara Collective (Australia) and the US Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network. TMR member Maui Hudson (Whakatōhea, Ngāruahine, Te Māhurehure; Director of Te Kotahi Research Institute, University of Waikato) co-authored the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance alongside Stephanie Russo Carroll and twelve others — the principles were drafted at a November 2018 workshop in Gaborone, Botswana, and published in the Data Science Journal in November 2020. The CARE Principles (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) are the international Indigenous data governance standard, adopted alongside the FAIR Principles in research and AI policy frameworks globally.

People

Tahu Kukutai (Ngāti Tiipa, Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāti Kinohaku, Te Aupōuri) is a founding member and Professor of Demography at Te Ngira Institute for Population Research, University of Waikato — a central figure in establishing Indigenous demography as a formal field and in translating data sovereignty principles into scholarly and policy frameworks. Maui Hudson and Daniel Wilson (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Pikiao; Computer Science lecturer, University of Auckland, focused on AI and culturally safe AI for Māori) are among the active Te Pae Anamata members, whose combined work spans the CARE Principles, AI safety, and tikanga-grounded computational design.

AI and Algorithmic Sovereignty

Te Mana Raraunga has developed a framework for Māori Algorithmic Sovereignty — principles for decolonizing existing algorithms and indigenizing future ones that use Māori data or make decisions affecting Māori communities. The framework extends the charter's foundational rights claim into the computational domain: the sovereignty Māori communities hold over their data applies equally to algorithmic systems that process, classify, and act on it. The network participated in the February 2026 GIDA IDSov and AI Workshop in Texcoco, Mexico, where member networks developed community-specific protocols for engaging with AI that uphold Indigenous data sovereignty principles.

Corpus Role

Te Mana Raraunga is the Aotearoa New Zealand anchor for the Māori data sovereignty organizing layer. Where the Global Indigenous Data Alliance operates internationally, TMR grounds the framework in the specific Treaty of Waitangi context: Māori data sovereignty here is not merely a normative aspiration but a Treaty right, with the charter asserting enforceable claims under domestic law. Its charter, now a decade old, has been recognized by New Zealand research funders and government data agencies as a governance standard. The Algorithmic Sovereignty framework positions TMR as a central voice in the emerging question of whether AI systems deployed in Aotearoa must comply with Māori data governance frameworks — the same question the First Nations Information Governance Centre raises in Canada through its OCAP® principles.