Indigenous intelligence, organisational foundations, and the AI era
13 October 2026
- Starting Out
- Scaling Up
- Adopt
- Ignite
Rōpata Paora and Dan Te Whenua Walker are Indigenous systems thinkers exploring how language, relationships, and organisational intelligence intersect in the AI era. Through Te Tatau, they are developing new approaches to stewardship, continuity, succession, and organisational memory that help people understand not just what an organisation does, but what it is entrusted to hold.
Combining AI, organisational design, language, governance, and Indigenous knowledge systems, Te Tatau creates living organisational whakapapa (lineage) helping organisations understand what they exist to hold, who they serve, where knowledge resides, and how capability survives across generations.
In a world where institutional memory is fragmented and leadership transitions create risk, Te Tatau offers a new model for continuity, succession, accountability, and collective intelligence.
Their vision is simple: Move beyond managing information and start understanding the relationships that make organisations resilient.
"Most organisations know what they do. Very few understand what they are here to hold."
Dan Te Whenua Walker
Founder & Chief Executive at Te Whare o Toitū AI
Dan Te Whenua Walker (Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāruahine) is founder and Chief Executive of Te Whare o Toitū AI, a kaupapa Māori AI company in partnership with Te Puna Ora o Mātaatua.
He spent twenty years at Microsoft, Dell and Samsung before leaving to build technology grounded in Māori values and Māori AI governance. He chairs the Child Cancer Foundation board and is a director of Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, Ngāti Ruanui and NZ Māori Tourism, and he is a doctoral candidate at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi researching Indigenous approaches to AI.
Rōpata Pāora
Toi Whātua Chief Cultural Officer at Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei
Rōpata Pāora is the founder of Te Tatau, a New Zealand-built platform reimagining how organisations understand connection, influence, governance, and collective intelligence.
Drawing on decades of experience in Māori language revitalisation, cultural leadership, governance, and systems design, Rōpata's work sits at the convergence of Indigenous knowledge systems and emerging technology.
His current focus is the development of lineage intelligence — a new approach that moves beyond traditional reporting and dashboards to reveal how actions, relationships, and decisions propagate throughout organisations in real time.
Through Te Tatau, Rōpata is exploring a simple but powerful proposition: "What if the most valuable thing inside an organisation was not its data, but the connections that give that data meaning?"
Venue
GridAKL / John Lysaght
101 Pakenham Street West, Wynyard Quarter, Auckland 1010
GridAKL / John Lysaght is more than just a workspace — it's a thriving community of visionaries, innovators and change-makers. GridAKL is home to a diverse mix of startups and small businesses working together to create solutions that make a difference.