About Tākoha
Built from the work, not from a whiteboard.
Tākoha Land & Digital Solutions builds service infrastructure for Māori whenua entities. We started with the work our people were already carrying, and asked what would make it easier to carry.
Based in Tairāwhiti, working with entities across Aotearoa.
Why we exist
“For a long time, I have watched our people carry more than the system was ever designed to hold.”
Tiowaana Harrington
Founder & CEO
Our people have carried complex ownership. Responsibility across generations. Expectations from whānau, hapū, iwi and hāpori, often all at once.
They have done it with scattered records, unclear processes and tools that were never built for the way they actually work. And they have still held it together.
That is the part most people miss. The problem has never been the people. The problem has been the system around them.
When the system is weak, even strong people are slowed down. Decisions take longer. Trust gets tested. Opportunities slip through the gaps.
When the system is clear, that changes. Trustees can see what is needed and act with confidence. Whānau feel informed rather than shut out. Work that had been sitting still begins to move again.
Tākoha exists for that shift. From holding things together, to moving things forward.
The name
First recorded in 1924.
For us, this is more than the origin of a name. It is the foundation of how we understand our work.
Tākoha comes from the kupu takoha, recorded in Te Whetu Marama o te Kotahitanga in 1924. In an article titled “Te Ekipihana,” the newspaper records two acts of takoha at the British Empire Exhibition in London.
A blanket from New Zealand was presented to Queen Mary:
“he takoha … he paraikete nō Niu Tīreni”
Later, at the Samoan house, another takoha was presented:
“he takoha … he whāriki nā ngā Hāmoa i mahi”
— a mat made by the people of Samoa.
Within Te Haahi Ratana, the kupu is pronounced Tā ko ha, with the first vowel lengthened. Our contemporary spelling, Tākoha, uses the tohutō to preserve that inherited pronunciation.
What makes this different
Māori controlled infrastructure that can connect.
We call this Māori Whenua Service Infrastructure. It means building the connective layer between:
- Māori organisations
- Māori controlled information
- Professional services
- Crown institutions
— and the workflows that connect them.
The goal is not to create another closed database. It is to make information and work capable of moving safely between relationships, while preserving who the information belongs to, where it came from, and the conditions under which it should be used.
That takes us back to the blanket and the mat.
The blanket did not cease to carry its provenance when it was presented. The mat did not stop carrying the labour and identity of the people who made it when it changed hands.
In the same way, Māori information should not become ownerless simply because it enters a digital system.
It carries whakapapa. It carries provenance. It carries relationships. And sometimes it carries obligations.
Tākoha’s responsibility is not to sever those connections. It is to protect them.
Our role
Protect. Connect. Enable.
Protect
The relationship between information and the people and whenua from whom it comes.
Connect
Organisations, knowledge, workflows and institutions, without forcing Māori organisations to surrender control of their own capability.
Enable
Whānau, trustees and Māori organisations to act with greater clarity, confidence and rangatiratanga.
This is what the name Tākoha asks of us. Not simply to create technology. But to carry something of value responsibly between people.
Foundations
One covers. One grounds. Both connect.
Together, the blanket and the mat give us our understanding of Tākoha.
The blanket represents the ability to take what already exists and make it serve our people.
The mat represents the responsibility to build foundations of our own.
Together they express a principle that sits at the heart of Tākoha:
We can work with what already exists without being defined by it, while building the foundations that belong to us.
That is the position from which Tākoha operates.
What Tākoha means to us
We do not define Tākoha simply as “gift.” Nor do we reduce it to “reciprocity.” The 1924 kōrero gives us something deeper.
For us, Tākoha is
Something of value carried into relationship without becoming disconnected from those from whom it came.
That means
- To give.
- To contribute.
- To acknowledge.
- To form relationship.
- To protect provenance.
- To carry responsibility for what has been entrusted.
What is given carries something of the giver with it. And what is received enters a relationship that must be honoured.
The whenua and the people are the centre
This philosophy determines how we think about technology and institutions.
Tākoha is not being built around the Māori Land Court.
It is not being built around the Ministry of Justice.
It is not being built around a software system.
It is being built around whenua, whānau and the Māori organisations responsible for them.
Institutions are important
- Courts exercise judicial authority.
- Registrars have statutory responsibilities.
- Government agencies have functions established by law.
- Lawyers, accountants, councils and other professionals all play important roles.
Tākoha does not seek to replace them. But neither do we believe Māori organisations should have to organise their entire institutional life around systems controlled by somebody else.
That is the distinction.
Not replacement. Not dependency. Capability.
Tākoha occupies the space between Māori organisations and the institutions they need to interact with.
We are not trying to become the Māori Land Court.
We are not trying to become the Ministry of Justice.
We are not trying to replace lawyers, accountants, trustees or decision makers.
We are building the capability that allows Māori organisations to engage all of them from a stronger position.
That means helping organisations to
- Organise and protect their own information
- Understand what is required of them
- Prepare and progress work more easily
- Maintain organisational memory
- Reduce repeated administration
- Connect information across different processes
- Preserve the provenance of Māori controlled information
- Engage external institutions with greater clarity and confidence
The goal is not isolation from institutions.
The goal is capability before interaction.
Changing the direction of dependency
Too often, Māori organisations must repeatedly reach outward into systems controlled elsewhere to understand their own position.
- Information sits in different places.
- Processes are fragmented.
- Knowledge disappears when people change.
- The same information is requested again.
Whānau and trustees spend time navigating institutions rather than progressing the aspirations of their whenua.
Tākoha is designed to change that relationship.
Instead of
We are building toward
The difference is important. The Māori organisation develops its own capability first. The external institution becomes one relationship among many, rather than the centre around which everything else must revolve.
Why now
The whenua has grown. The everyday work around it has not caught up.
$41b
Held by Māori collectives
Assets held by Māori trusts, incorporations and other Māori entities in 2023 — part of an asset base that grew from $69 billion to $126 billion in five years.
Taonga
Data is not just data
The Waitangi Tribunal has recognised that data can carry mātauranga Māori, and that mātauranga is a taonga the Crown has a duty to actively protect. Where records are held, and under whose authority, matters.
One step
The gap is in the everyday
Capital, capability and appetite are all there. What is missing is the ordinary work in between: knowing what is needed, what is missing, and who holds the authority to act.
Asset figures: Te Ōhanga Māori 2023, MBIE and BERL. Tribunal finding: Wai 2522 report on the CPTPP, Waitangi Tribunal, 2021.
How we work
What we do, and what we will never do.
The enemy is unnecessary burden. Not the Court, not another provider, and not the people working inside existing institutions.
The trust remains the decision maker.
Tākoha does not approve, decide or sign anything. It organises information and shows what happens next. Every decision stays with the people who hold the authority to make it.
The Court remains the Court.
We are not a substitute for the Māori Land Court and we hold no standing in it. We help entities arrive prepared, with the right information in the right order.
We do not give legal advice.
Tākoha helps organise information and explain process. Where advice is needed, we say so, and we support the work around it.
Your information is not a product.
Whakapapa, governance records and individual user data are never sold and never licensed. Data is held onshore in Aotearoa under Māori data sovereignty protocols.
Where we are
Tairāwhiti, Aotearoa New Zealand.
We are based in Tairāwhiti and work with trusts, komiti and entities across the country. We travel for hui, and we meet online when that is easier for owners who live away from home.
Other systems may hold the record. Tākoha helps the work move.
Tell us what you are carrying.
Book a hui and we will talk through the work in front of you, what is missing, and whether Tākoha helps. No obligation, and no pressure to commit.
For every Secretary carrying the work.