Established in 2014, Digital Natives Academy is an award-winning non-profit dedicated to cultivating the next generation of digital innovators, creators, and changemakers.

As an indigenous-centred, Māori-focused organisation (open to all ethnicities), our Three Kete (baskets) of Knowledge guide everything we do. These kete hold the wisdom of our taiao (environment), our ahurea (culture), and our responsibility to create pā harakeke (strong, intergenerational foundations).

Through project-based learning and real-world challenges, we empower young people to design solutions that not only advance technology and harness the potential of AI, but also protect our environment, reduce emissions, and build climate resilience. By honouring their identity and whakapapa, our students learn to uplift their communities and contribute meaningfully to a rapidly evolving, climate and AI impacted world.

Through digital and creative technologies, we empower rangatahi (young people) to become innovators and leaders who:

• • Protect the environment – honouring kaitiakitanga (guardianship) and responding to climate change with creativity and resilience.
  • Strengthen identity and culture – drawing on Te Ao Māori worldviews to ground learning in whakapapa (genealogy), tikanga (customs and practices), and reo (language).
  • Create lasting generational impact – thriving in high-growth sectors and shaping how Aotearoa responds to global challenges such as climate change and artificial intelligence.

At DNA, we back talent with tools. We identify and support learners with the skill, tenacity, and leadership potential to move from consumers of technology to creators and developers shaping its future.

Our goal is not just to inspire, but to prepare young people to lead, whether that’s pioneering new digital solutions, driving social impact, or creating innovative responses to global challenges like climate change. By combining creative tech with a commitment to kaitiakitanga, our learners are empowered to design a future that is innovative, sustainable, and grounded in their identity and values.

Illuminating Accredited Pathways

To learn more about Native Tech, click here.

Creating a Nation of
Bold & Creative Thinkers

We are building communities of fearless, future-focused thinkers who draw on their unique perspectives to tackle the world’s biggest challenges, from internet governance, the impacts of climate change to the rise of artificial intelligence.

Over the years, DNA has become more than a platform for skill acquisition and career pathways, it’s become a sanctuary from an often cold, uncaring world where the outliers of society can find whānau, friendship and most importantly a sense of belonging.

Whose Future? Whose Intelligence?

At Digital Natives Academy, we believe in bold, creative thinking grounded in curiosity and responsibility. For more than a decade, we’ve worked to empower rangatahi, young people, not just to use technology, but to shape it, to become the architects, critics, and guardians of the digital worlds they will inherit.

With the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence, we find ourselves at a critical crossroads.

AI is not a neutral force. It is shaped by the values, assumptions, and agendas of those who build it, and too often, those builders do not reflect our communities, and do no hold our values. They do not carry our stories. They do not design with our mokopuna, with future generations in mind. And they do not ask the questions we would:

• • Whose intelligence is this?
  • What worldview does it serve?
  • What is lost in the automation of human decision-making?

We are told that AI will solve everything. That it will make things faster, smarter, more efficient. But faster for whom? Smarter by what measure? And at what cost?

Artificial intelligence should not be built in our image, it must be built with us and by us, or not at all. Because the future doesn’t belong to machines. It belongs to those skilled enough to shape and navigate them