Who owns Pacific Knowledge?

Mijica Lus | South Pacific Fellow

Image sourced from Bob Brewer via Unsplash

Digital platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), and online storytelling are increasingly being used to preserve language, culture, and identity across the Pacific. Indigenous and diaspora communities are documenting oral histories online, while Indigenous-led AI language projects are emerging as tools for cultural preservation. In this context, technology has become a space where identity, memory, and cultural survival are actively shaped.

As AI expands globally, concerns around data extraction, cultural ownership, and representation are becoming increasingly urgent for Indigenous and Pacific communities. Languages, stories, songs, images, and customary knowledge are now being digitalised and circulated through systems often controlled beyond the communities they originate from.While these technologies create new opportunities for preservation and connection, they also raise questions about cultural authority, ownership, and custodianship in the digital age.

Digital Storytelling and Youth Agency

For many Pacific youth, particularly those within diaspora communities, digital platforms have become spaces for cultural connection and identity formation. Social media, podcasts, and online archives allow young people to share language, genealogy, cultural practices, and community histories across borders. These initiatives challenge assumptions that Pacific youth are passive consumers of technology. Instead, they position young people as active creators, storytellers, and custodians of cultural identity across both physical and digital spaces.

These platforms are particularly significant in migration contexts, where physical distance can disrupt intergenerational knowledge transfer and digital storytelling becomes a form of cultural continuity. Programs such as the Young Pacific Leaders (YPL) "Navigating the Digital Landscape for Storytelling Advocacy Workshop," which equips emerging Pacific leaders with digital advocacy and storytelling skills, and the Future Ancestors Program, which supports Indigenous and Pacific youth to preserve cultural knowledge through creative and digital practice, demonstrate how young people are adapting cultural knowledge to contemporary digital environments while strengthening cultural engagement and advocacy.

These initiatives illustrate that digital technology is not simply changing how culture is shared, but also how it is safeguarded and carried forward by the next generation.

AI, Language Revitalisation, and Custodial Technology

AI is reshaping how Indigenous and Pacific communities engage with language revitalisation. One of the most prominent examples is Papa Reo, developed by Māori technologist Peter-Lucas Jones and Te Hiku Media in Aotearoa New Zealand. Papa Reo uses AI and speech recognition technology to support the revitalisation of Te Reo Māori while embedding Indigenous governance principles into language data management. Rather than allowing cultural information to be absorbed into external systems without oversight, the initiative prioritises custodial ownership and community control over how language resources are collected and used.

This demonstrates that technology can be shaped by Indigenous values and governance systems that centre community authority. At the heart of these discussions is Indigenous data sovereignty, the principle that Indigenous peoples retain ownership and control over data relating to their cultures and knowledge systems.

Digital Inequality and Cultural Risk

While initiatives such as Papa Reo demonstrate the potential of AI and digital technologies to support cultural preservation, these opportunities are not experienced equally across the Pacific. Many communities continue to face barriers relating to internet access, digital infrastructure, technological literacy, and funding capacity. These limitations shape who can participate in digital spaces and whose knowledge becomes visible globally. 

There are also growing concerns about cultural extraction in AI development. Indigenous and Pacific knowledge shared online can be absorbed into datasets and generative AI systems without consultation, recognition, or reciprocity. In some cases, cultural narratives risk becoming detached from the communities and custodianship structures that give them meaning. Digitalisation can preserve culture, but it can also expose it to misuse and loss of control. As a result, questions surrounding AI in the Pacific are deeply connected to authority, consent, and cultural sovereignty.

Pacific Leadership in Digital Spaces

Pacific communities are increasingly shaping global conversations on ethical technology. Rather than rejecting digital systems, many Indigenous and Pacific-led initiatives are working to reshape them. This includes advocating for culturally responsive AI systems, stronger protections for Indigenous intellectual property, and governance frameworks that recognise collective custodianship rather than purely commercial ownership of data. Pacific youth are central to this shift, using digital activism, storytelling, and creative production to ensure Pacific identity remains grounded in community values. In doing so, they position the Pacific not as a passive participant in global technology systems, but as an active contributor to debates on ethics, governance, and cultural rights.

Who Owns Pacific Knowledge?

The expansion of AI and digital technologies is transforming how knowledge is created and shared across the Pacific. But beneath this transformation lies a deeper question: how is cultural identity protected in the process? Pacific youth are demonstrating that technology can support continuity rather than loss but only when communities retain authority over how knowledge is governed. Initiatives such as Papa Reo and youth storytelling programs show that cultural sovereignty is being actively redefined, not erased, in the digital age.

Ultimately, the future of Pacific knowledge will not be determined by technology alone. It will depend on whether Pacific youth can remain grounded in identity, carry ancestral responsibility, and continue to act as custodians of culture in a rapidly changing digital world.

Born on Ngunnawal–Ngambri Country and raised in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Mijica Lus is a young Pacific-Australian advocate passionate about storytelling, regional diplomacy, and elevating the voices of the Pasifika diaspora. She is the Founder of the Aurosokwo Project, an initiative creating digital storytelling pathways for young people across PNG and the Pacific to share their experiences, shape narratives, and influence decision-making. Mijica’s work focuses on youth empowerment, climate justice, gender equality, and strengthening people-to-people connections between Australia and the Pacific. She has collaborated with community organisations, youth networks, and policy stakeholders, and has represented diaspora communities in national dialogues, including engagements at Parliament House. She is a council member with the Australian Red Cross and President of the United Nationals Young Professionals, ACT Chapter. With a commitment to bridging cultures and amplifying Pacific perspectives, Mijica hopes to contribute thoughtful analysis and lived-experience storytelling to YAIA’s South Pacific portfolio. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Young Australians in International Affairs. AI tools were used by this author for grammar checks . but all content is original, and no plagiarism has been used in the preparation of this article.