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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 activism against the toymaker company Lego, makers of the Bionicles series of toys. Maori accused Lego of being exploiters of Maori intellectual property.
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 plagiarised the names of 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 - the official Lego Bionicles discussion forum. Maori accused them of continuing to use and allow the use of the words even after Lego had admitted it had misappropriated them and would no longer be using them.
Participants in the debate found themselves banned on the forums, and many of the posts made were editted (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tino-rangatiratanga/message/10282) with the heaviest editting being done to posts made by the administration team in an attempt to subvert readers and onlookers.
Retaliation was swift and ruthless leaving the BZPOWER forums webhost no choice but to drop the website from its servers.
Although it was never established that the cyber attackers that levelled the denial of service attack against the Bionicles 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 (http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0211/S00055.htm). (It was suspected that this group was none other than various people involved with or associated with the BZPOWER group).
Today
Today the Aotearoa Cafe is also involved in assisting Maori find their tribal links, continuing the struggle against neo-colonisation and misappropriation of Maori traditional intellictual 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
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