Tohu Māori — Māori motif
Unaunahi
Kotahitanga · Collective armour · Abundance
Fish scales — interlocking collective protection, abundance, strength in layers.
Cultural context
Unaunahi is the fish-scale pattern found throughout Māori carving and weaving. It takes its form from the overlapping scales of a fish — each individual scale small and relatively fragile; together forming an interlocking system of collective protection that is flexible, resilient, and beautiful.
The motif carries the idea of kotahitanga — unity, togetherness, collective action. No single scale holds the whole. Each one depends on those beside it. Together they form armour. The system has no single point of failure, no centre that can be cut out to destroy the whole.
Unaunahi also represents abundance — fish scales signal a plentiful catch, a community well-provided for, the ocean as a generous ancestor. In the digital context, this maps to: data sovereignty is not scarcity thinking. Māori communities sharing and governing their own data collectively creates abundance — knowledge, infrastructure, capability — rather than the extraction economy of corporate platforms.
The motif is particularly powerful for understanding collective data governance. Individual data privacy is a liberal, atomised model — each person protecting their own. Māori data sovereignty is unaunahi — collective protection, collective benefit, no individual sale of what belongs to the community.
In this course
Module 5 — Hoahoa tika (Designing ethical systems). Unaunahi is the design principle: ethical systems work in interlocking layers. No single point of failure. Collective before individual. Protection as the architecture.
Wider tradition
The fish-scale pattern appears in carved house panels, woven kete and kākahu, and contemporary Māori design. It connects the community to the ocean as a source of life and to the collective labour of fishing — which was always communal in te ao Māori. The scale pattern in tā moko places the wearer within networks of relationship and protection.
Tiaki — Download social cards
Unaunahi campaign cards
6 messages × 4 platforms = 24 cards. Click to download SVG — use directly on X, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.
Akoranga — Learning activity
Map your collective scales
Draw your community's data as unaunahi. Each person or organisation is a scale. How do they connect? Where are the gaps? Where is the protection strongest? Where is a single bad actor most likely to find a way through? What does the design reveal about vulnerability and strength?
Toha — Social copy
Ready-to-post
Tweet 1 — Ko tātou he kahu
Fish scales interlock — each one protecting the next. No single scale holds the whole. Ko tātou he kahu. Data sovereignty is collective, not individual. Unaunahi. #KiwiDialectic #Kotahitanga
Tweet 2 — Kotahitanga
Collective strength. Individual data protection is not enough — the scales must interlock. Module 5 on ethical design 👉 [link] #Unaunahi #KiwiDialectic #EthicalAI
Tweet 3 — He waka eke noa
The waka carries everyone. Collective sovereignty or none at all. The unaunahi model: every scale, every community, every right — held together. #KiwiDialectic #MāoriDataSovereignty
Kōrero Tāhūhū — Full thread
X / Twitter thread — copy and fire
Hashtag bank