Ko Aotearoa Ināianei by Jayden Houghton and David V Williams

Ko Aotearoa Ināianei begins from a deceptively difficult question: who has the authority to protect, control and make decisions about Māori knowledge and cultural expression? Fifteen years after the Waitangi Tribunal released Ko Aotearoa Tēnei, its landmark report on the Wai 262 claim, editors Jayden Houghton and David V. Williams bring together sixteen legal scholars to consider how those questions have developed, and how much remains unresolved.

The scope is deliberately broad. Mānuka honey and haka sit alongside waiata, genetic resources, trade marks, patents and copyright. Yet the collection repeatedly exposes the limitations of treating these matters as conventional intellectual property problems. Western legal systems tend to ask who owns something, how long that ownership lasts and what remedies follow from infringement. Māori concepts of whakapapa, kaitiakitanga and tino rangatiratanga demand a different set of questions about relationship, responsibility, inheritance and authority.

That tension gives the book much of its intellectual force. Several chapters consider what happens when tikanga Māori is not added as a cultural qualification to existing law, but allowed to challenge the assumptions beneath it. Could an intangible taonga such as a waiata possess legal personality? How should the law respond when taonga are used offensively or commercially without appropriate authority? What would knowledge governance look like if it began with the communities from which that knowledge originates?

These are not abstract concerns. Digital reproduction, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and global commercialisation have made cultural material easier to copy, manipulate and monetise than at any previous point. The legal mechanisms available to protect it have not necessarily developed at the same speed. Ko Aotearoa Ināianei is particularly effective when it shows that the problem is not only unauthorised use, but the deeper question of who gets to decide what appropriate use looks like.

The collection also benefits from refusing to present Wai 262 as a completed intellectual project. Its contributors do not speak with one voice. Some extend the arguments of Ko Aotearoa Tēnei, while others test or challenge elements of its approach. That disagreement is productive. It prevents the anniversary from becoming commemorative and keeps attention on the unfinished nature of the work.

Its academic seriousness does, however, make this a demanding book. Readers unfamiliar with intellectual property law, Te Tiriti jurisprudence or the Wai 262 history may find some chapters dense, and the multi-author structure inevitably produces shifts in tone and accessibility. A stronger introductory pathway through some of the legal concepts might have widened its audience further.

Yet the importance of Ko Aotearoa Ināianei lies precisely in its refusal to make these questions easy. Houghton and Williams have assembled a substantial contribution to debates that reach far beyond the law faculty. For Māori artists, researchers, scientists, businesses, iwi and hapū, the protection of mātauranga and taonga concerns cultural continuity as much as legal ownership. The collection asks Aotearoa to consider whether its legal systems are capable of recognising that distinction.

Fifteen years after Ko Aotearoa Tēnei, the challenge remains unfinished. Ko Aotearoa Ināianei gives that challenge renewed clarity, intellectual depth and considerable urgency.

Reviewer: Chris Reed

Auckland University Press