Digital Natives Academy, Te Arawa Fisheries and Touch Media are joining forces to launch a new programme that brings together mātauranga Māori, emerging technology and environmental guardianship.
Guardians of the Moana: High-Tech Kaitiakitanga is designed to equip rangatahi with the tools, knowledge and confidence to monitor, protect and tell the stories of their moana (oceans). At its heart, the programme is about more than learning how to fly drones. It is about building a generation of young people who understand the impacts of climate change, respect the depth of indigenous environmental knowledge and are ready to create practical solutions for their own communities.
The programme begins where strong Māori education should begin: with people, place and whakapapa.
Through marae-based wānanga, rangatahi will learn the foundations of drone technology, including flight basics, safety and first-person-view capture techniques. These technical skills will be delivered alongside bilingual learning resources in te reo Māori and English, ensuring the programme is accessible, culturally grounded and connected to identity.
But the real strength of the programme is its intergenerational approach. Rangatahi will not be learning in isolation. They will work alongside kaumātua, iwi leaders and technical experts to co-design methods for collecting, interpreting and sharing environmental data. This matters because climate change is not an abstract issue for coastal and lake communities. It is already visible in changing water quality, shifting ecosystems, erosion, flooding, warming waters and pressure on kai species.
For Te Arawa Fisheries, the kaupapa is deeply connected to kaitiakitanga and the long-term health of Te Arawa waters. For Digital Natives Academy, it reflects a commitment to preparing rangatahi for the future of work while keeping them anchored in who they are. For Touch Media, it creates an opportunity to transform data, drone imagery and cultural narratives into powerful digital experiences that can educate, engage and mobilise communities.
The programme will also support the creation of digital deliverables, including an interactive online platform where drone footage, maps, video, ecological data and community stories can be brought together. This will give rangatahi a way to document environmental change, share local knowledge and make visible the relationship between climate, whenua, wai and people.
A key part of this kaupapa is data rangatiratanga. Too often, environmental data about Māori places is collected, stored and interpreted by others. Guardians of the Moana takes a different approach. It supports iwi and rangatahi to own, manage and make meaning from their own environmental data. That shift is critical. Data is not neutral when it relates to whakapapa, whenua and taonga species. It must be held with care, authority and responsibility.
By combining drone technology with mātauranga Māori, the programme creates a new pathway into climate action. Rangatahi will learn how to observe environmental change, gather evidence, interpret patterns and communicate what they see. They will also learn that innovation does not mean leaving indigenous knowledge behind. The strongest climate solutions for Aotearoa will come from bringing old and new knowledge systems together with respect.
This is the foundation for a different kind of climate leadership.
Not climate leadership that only talks about crisis.
Climate leadership that can fly a drone over tribal waters, capture what is changing, sit with kaumātua to understand what those changes mean, build a digital platform to share the story and help communities make better decisions.
Guardians of the Moana is ultimately about talent, mastery and opportunity. It gives young people the chance to discover their talent through technology, build mastery through real-world environmental practice and connect that learning to opportunities that serve their people and their place.
As climate change continues to reshape the future, programmes like this are not optional. They are necessary. Rangatahi need more than awareness. They need tools, cultural grounding, technical capability and pathways into action.
Through the partnership between Digital Natives Academy, Te Arawa Fisheries and Touch Media, Guardians of the Moana sets a powerful foundation for young Māori innovators to become the next generation of high-tech kaitiaki.
