Ko Aotearoa Inaianei : New Perspectives on Protecting Maori Knowledge and Cultural Expressions

From manuka honey to haka, and across patents, trade marks, copyright and geographical indications, the protection of traditional knowledge, cultural expressions and genetic resources is one of the most complex legal and political challenges of our time.

On the fifteenth anniversary of Ko Aotearoa Tenei, the Waitangi Tribunal’s landmark report on the Wai 262 claim, sixteen leading legal scholars offer new perspectives on how authority over and guardianship of traditional knowledge, cultural expressions and genetic resources might be recognised and protected in contemporary legal systems.

Ko Aotearoa Inaianei takes up the wero laid down by the original Wai 262 claimants and extends their kaupapa into the present. The chapters confront pressing and unresolved questions. How should offensive or derogatory uses of taonga be remedied? Could legal personhood be applied to intangible Maori taonga such as waiata, and what would that recognition require? What might knowledge governance grounded in tikanga Maori involve, and how might it challenge or reshape Western intellectual property frameworks?

Through wide-ranging essays engaging with law, policy, theory, science and culture, the authors advance aspirational visions of cultural ownership, control, inheritance and identity, grounded in the shared whakapapa of people, land and knowledge. Ko Aotearoa Inaianei contributes to global debates on Indigenous authority and knowledge protection.