Join us on Friday 24 May for the 2019 Communications and Technology Research Symposium.
Our guest speaker this year is Graeme Everton - Entrepreneur Strategist, First Tree Growing (New Zealand).
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1:00pm - MACT student poster display
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3:00pm - Distinguished speaker
Location: 2-520 Enterprise Square (10230 Jasper Avenue) or via Livestream
This event is open to everyone. No RSVP or registration is required.
This event is made possible with funding from a Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) Dialogue Grant.
Beads and blankets for your spectrum?
In 1999, the Waitangi Tribunal ruled that the radio spectrum was a taonga (treasure), a natural resource that belonged to Māori, the Indigenous People of New Zealand. In response, the Government of the day refused to recognise the claim and so began a 20-year journey challenging the Government to do the right thing and negotiate a settlement. In 2019 as the world looks to 5G, the next generation of mobile technology to deliver everything form autonomous cars to drone swarm management, the Government is finally indicating an interest to resolve the claim once and for all.
Māori are looking to shift away from its reliance on primary sector industries like fishing, forestry and dairy and move into new sectors such as Telecommunications and Information Technology by leveraging ownership of modern resources like radio spectrum to gain a strategic foothold. Whether we like it or not this will not be the last of these modern claims to come forward in the future.
Speaker Biography:
Graeme Everton trained as a radio communications technician, joining the New Zealand Post Office, Radio Communications Branch in the early 1980's. One of only two Māori radio technicians in the Post Office at the time. Around this time, he began advocating for Māori ownership of the Radio Spectrum, inspired by previous work done by Piripi Walker and others to secure FM broadcasting licenses for Māori broadcasting. He believed that if Māori owned and managed radio spectrum, this could be leveraged into building for the long term Māori capacity in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry. Everton's work eventually lead to the Māori Spectrum claim to the Waitangi Tribunal in 1999 called Wai 776, and an historic win which established that Māori had rights to the radio spectrum as a natural resource and that the Crown should work with Māori to negotiate a fair and equitable share of the resource. Even though to date the Crown has chosen to ignore the recommendations of the Tribunal, Māori continue to challenge the Crown to settle the claim once and for all. Discussions have recently commenced between Māori representatives and the Crown over the allocation of 5G spectrum to Māori. Today Everton heads a company developing IoT and 5G applications for rural community development in New Zealand.