Data Sovereignty and the Kaitiakitanga License

Updated 11 October 2023

Interest in our Kaitiakitanga License is growing as our important work in language revitalisation is being recognised globally. We are a small team, so we aren’t able to respond or commit to every request we receive. We will prioritise requests from Indigenous communities and individuals/organisations that are committed to supporting Indigenous communities working towards the revitalisation of their language and culture.

We want our research to reach as many people as possible because we know our approach to artificial "intelligence" is one the industry needs. Our doors are always open. If you find yourself in Kaitaia, Aotearoa, please come and visit us. Otherwise, if we’re unable to meet with you, please find below some resources on data sovereignty and our Kaitiakitanga License.

Data Sovereignty, Licensing, etc.

Kaitiakitanga License: License and its variants in our GitHub repository

A Practical Guide to creating your own Stewardship (Kaitiakitanga) License

Māori Data Sovereignty Principles - set of principles collated by Te Mana Raraunga

Articles about our work

In OpenAI's Whisper is another case study in Colonisation, we evaluate a multilingual speech recognition model and demonstrate how it raises important issues around data soveriengty, technology imperialism, and colonisation at scale.

Guardian article the Stupdity of AI on how artificial intelligence in its current form is based on the wholesale appropriation of existing culture, and the notion that it is actually intelligent could be actively dangerous.

Wired article about the threat of Big Tech and Indigenous Data

MIT Technology Review article on our approach to artificial intelligence and data guardianship. Part of a series of articles on AI colonialsm.

Inside the fight for Māori data sovereignty

The dangers of digital colonisation published in E-Tangata.

Podcasts

Lend Me Your Voice on Mozilla's IRL.

Big Tech Won’t Revitalize Indigenous Languages on Tech Won't Save Us.

Indigenous Data Sovereignty on Greater than Code.

Presentations

Keynote at the Create Commons Global Summit 2023.

AI => Bigger Tech Imperialism presented at the PAI Policy Forum UK 2023.

Accelerating the revitalisation of te reo Māori with AI presented to the United Nation's AI for Good kaupapa.

Presentation on Indigenous Data Sovereignty for the Natives in Tech conference.

Papa Reo: history of our work and our approach to empowering indigenous peoples through AI.

To see how we put these values to practice, check out the Whare Kōrero app, the Rongo app, and our Papa Reo API.