This study is going to examine what is meant by Indigenous sovereignty and its importance in relation to Indigenous claims to data sovereignty. To do this, I will first examine the mechanisms by which CANZUS nations appropriated Indigenous lands through the “fiction” of Crown sovereignty and terra nullius, that is, the Doctrine of Discovery. Some scholars view that the fiction of terra nullius finds its data corollary in datum nullius – “a blank slate on which could be constructed the edifice of a distorting ‘colonial archive.’”
I will then consider how such understandings play out in relation to Māori claims to their taonga, or treasured possessions, through a discussion of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Te Tiriti)/Treaty of Waitangi, signed between representatives of the British Crown and some iwi (tribes). Te Tiriti is considered to be Aotearoa’s founding constitutional document. This will involve an analysis of what is meant by taonga in relation to Te Tiriti. From here, I examine two findings from the Waitangi Tribunal, which is a permanent Commission of Enquiry that investigates and makes recommendations on claims brought by Māori in relation to actions or omissions of the State that breach Te Tiriti. These findings are pertinent to issues of Māori data sovereignty, in particular in relation to Māori interest, control and protection of Māori knowledge, inherent in taonga.
In the next section, I look at some of the policy implications of these findings, explaining how these have impacted on the State’s behaviour. I then take a brief overview of how Māori data sovereignty is being implemented at an institutional level. Finally, I briefly examine how the author’s tribe of Ngāi Tahu might implement data sovereignty through a case study of a taonga as it transfers from its biophysical form to data.