Making relations: Re-imagining AI through crafted and embodied knowledge systems in Moana Oceania

This paper addresses the problems of data colonialism from a standpoint that not only challenges the legitimacy of colonial economics but also the epistemological legitimacy of data as a raw material from which knowledge and knowledge systems might be generated. Our reflexive investigation centres on knowledge systems of Aotearoa-New Zealand and the wider Moana Oceania through embodied traditions of wānanga and talanoa. As we explain, these offer a critical alternative to Western scholarly practices and allow us to attend to unremarked principles that underlie the sociotechnical knowledge infrastructure of a hegemonic global academy. Meeting Māori and Pasifika scholars, elders and master craftspeople within their own discourse traditions allows us to reopen categories of investigation beyond the already problematic consequences that can so clearly be seen in continued colonial capitalism and the neo-colonial data economy.