Tracing Opuatia: Repatriating and repurposing colonial land data

Maori land data produced through colonial systems of dispossession lack interoperability, preventing kin-based communities from tracking their land. Our novel approach to repatriate and harmonise historic land data traces the history of the 45,500 acre Opuatia Block allocated to hapu Ngati Tiipa in 1866, following the confiscation of 1.2 million acres of Waikato land. Ngati Tiipa resisted Crown and settler pressures for 30 years, but 80% of Opuatia was alienated within a decade. We discuss the devastation of 'judicial raupatu' and the implications of this work for hapu data sovereignty and wider international efforts to achieve Indigenous data sovereignty.