HistoryWorks Mapping Director Moka Apiti travelled to the University of Hawai’i at Manoa in November 2004 at the invitation of Professor Brian Murton (Nga Puhi) of the Geography Department. Moka gave a guest lecture to post-graduate students at the university on the uses of GIS for indigenous peoples, drawing on his experience in providing mapping for Māori communities within the Treaty claims process.
Following the lecture, Moka travelled around Hawai’i, meeting with and presenting seminars to indigenous Hawaiian groups and visiting some of their sites of significance. Moka also visited the East-West Center in Honolulu and compared processes and protocols for indigenous mapping with academic staff there.
Moka says it was great to be able to see first-hand Hawaiian efforts to map sites of significance and land alienation, and to exchange notes with indigenous mappers there in the company of Professor Murton and Dr Robert Wiri, both originally from Aotearoa.
It was an invaluable trip for me, building on the indigenous mapping networks I have built up since attending the International Forum on Indigenous Mapping in Vancouver in March 2004′, says Moka. ‘It reinforced for me once again that many of the issues confronting mappers working within Māori communities are common to other indigenous mapping efforts – and respecting the intellectual property of the tangata whenua is always the key to success.’ [Added 15 March 2005]