Aotearoa Cafe

The Aotearoa Cafe is the largest Maori discussion forum on the internet. The web forum is run by a group of Maori who are all members and participants in the Tino Rangatiratanga Maori Sovereignty Movement.

History

The Aotearoa Cafe began in 1998 as the Maori Discussions Online forums hosted on www.culture.co.nz (one of the first Maori websites on the internet).

In 2000 the Aotearoa Cafe became involved in promoting and education about Moko – Maori styled tattoo. Several members of the Aotearoa Cafe began their own website http://www.tamoko.org.nz to address the lack of education out there about this ancient art, and also to address the overwhelming amount of misappropriation going on around the world concerning this art.

By 2001 the Aotearoa Cafe (by that time now hosted on Aotearoalive) became embroiled in cyber terrorism against the toymaker company LEGO, makers of the BIONICLE series of toys. Maori accused Lego of being exploiters of Maori language.

Lawyer Maui Solomon also became involved in the dispute and brought claims on behalf of several Maori tribes to Lego. Discussions resulted in Lego admitting it had named its toys from Maori and concluded it would no longer use those words in future toys. They also promised to develop a code of conduct for cultural expressions of traditional knowledge.

At the same time, members of the Aotearoa Cafe were involved in abrupt discussions with the administration of BZPower – a Lego Bionicle discussion forum. Maori accused them of continuing to use and allow the use of the words even after Lego had conceeded that it had misappropriated them and would no longer be using them. As the debate became more heated, many of the posts made were edited by the administration team in an attempt to maintain constructive discussion. Unruly participants in the debate found themselves banned from the BZPower forums.

Retaliation involved the use of a denial of service attack. Because of the overload, BZPower remained offline while the administration upgraded the forum software. Although it was never established that the cyber terrorists that levelled the attack against the Bionicle website were in fact members of the Aotearoa Cafe, the forums nevertheless received a retaliation attack from a group calling themselves, Free Speech Worldwide Inc, known to have no connections with BZPower.

Today

Today the Aotearoa Cafe also claims to be involved in assisting Maori find their tribal links, continuing the struggle against neo-colonisation and misappropriation of Maori traditional intellectual property, raising political awareness of the Maori struggle for independence, and with the release of Aocafe Chat, is now bringing Maori together in online live chat discussions.

External links

• Aotearoa Cafe
• BZPower.com
• BIONICLE Toy Line
• Maori Cyberterrorism Vs LEGO Leads To Reprisals
• Transcript of Discussion on BZPower
• Opposing Viewpoint
• NEO-COLONIALISM: Internet war brewing over Lego's use of te Reo
• Maoris win Lego battle Lego agrees to discontinue use of Maori words.
• Ta Moko website
• Anti 42below Vodka website – A feedback website about the 42Below Vodka racist web ad.
• Fony A website by a member of the Aotearoa Cafe about Sony misappropriation of Maori imagery.