83% of our whānau; children, grandchildren, aunties, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews live outside the boundaries of our ancestral home of the Whakatōhea. Many of our whānau members were drawn to economical, educational, social and political opportunities outside the picturesque township of Ōpōtiki on the east coast of the North Island of Aotearoa. A large proportion of our whānau remain living in Aotearoa, however, 24% have made their homes in Europe and Australia.

At the conclusion of a recent Whānau reunion a discussion around technologies ensured between whānau members with the question of whether technologies can make and maintain connections for those of use living outside our tribal homelands with those living on our turangawaewae.

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A cousin shared that when she heard pūrākau, stories of home, she was automatically transformed back her times in Ōpōtiki. It was then suggested that we as a whānau collect stories to help keep connections with our homelands. The question was then asked, how do we protect our whānau pūrākau?

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Our whānau plan to share our experiences with technologies providing suggestions around governance and intellectual property protocols which will then be woven into algorithms that will inform the building of next-generation Patumoana and Reikete Amoamo AI systems.