27/11/2025
Yesterday early hours we had the privilege to present to UN Committee on Eliminating Racial Discrimination (CERD). We thank the Human Rights Council and our fellow NGOs for this opportunity, gathered through our work over the past years.
Today, we present our briefing paper:
โโ๐ฆ๐๐๐ โ๐๐๐๐ฅ๐ค ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ ๐๐ค ๐๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ ๐พ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ฆ๐ค๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ฆ๐ค๐ฅ๐ฃ๐ช โ โ๐ฃ๐ ๐ฅ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ค ๐๐ฆ๐ค๐๐.โ
แดกสส แดกแด แดกสแดแดแด แดสษช๊ฑ แดแดแดแดส
Mahi Moana entered this work through lived experience and community mandate. For years we have supported Indigenous artists and families facing repeated harm:
โข Loss of ownership of their songs and rights
โข Unpaid royalties across decades
โข Recordings taken offshore into restricted archives
โข Traditional instruments copied or misrepresented
โข Sacred songs reused online without consent
โข Eldersโ knowledge controlled by institutions
โข Artists trapped in lifetime contracts
โข Families unable to navigate rights after artists passed away
This list goes on.
Across our workshops and talanoa in the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, we witnessed the same pattern: the exploitation was not isolated โ it was structural, global, and accelerating.
แดกสส แดสษช๊ฑ แดแดแดแดแดส๊ฑ
For Indigenous peoples, music is not merely entertainment โ it is genealogy, ceremony, identity, and ancestral memory.
Yet for more than a century, colonial systems extracted, suppressed, and controlled our music. Those systems remain embedded in the global industry today.
In Aotearoa, Te Tiriti o Waitangi affirms Mฤori tino rangatiratanga over their taonga, including cultural expressions and traditional knowledge. The Crownโs obligations of protection, partnership, and participation require safeguarding Mฤori authority over their cultural heritage.
But the current music industry โ dominated by corporations, digital platforms, AI companies, and copyright systems โ does not recognise collective ownership, cultural protocol, or sacred knowledge.
This results in ongoing violations of UNDRIP, ICESCR, ILO 169, and breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
This is not a technical failure โit is racism.
When a global system continually privileges dominant frameworks, Western authorship, Western profit, and Western definitions of โcreativity,โ while denying Indigenous peoples control over their own cultural identity โ
that is structural racism.
It is the continuation of colonial hierarchies in a digital age.
It is cultural erasure repackaged as industry practice.
This is digital colonisation, and it is growing at unprecedented scale.
แดกสส แดสษช๊ฑ แดแดแดแดษดแด ษช๊ฑ แดสษชแดษชแดแดส
For the first time, major shifts are converging:
โข Hard industry learnings revealing long-standing harm
โข A global shift toward Indigenous storytelling
โข Indigenous origin stories finally being told by our own peoples
โข Rapid AI expansion and copyright law reform
Music has become a global language, but in unregulated digital spaces it can also be weaponised โ used to distort identity, imitate sacred sounds, or generate artificial versions of our culture without context, consent, or community authority.
We stand at a crossroads.
We call on Member States to create international protections, regulate AI, uphold free, prior, and informed consent, and recognise Indigenous authority over cultural expressions and origin stories.
Malo โaupito, faโafetai tele lava, tฤnฤ koutou, tฤnฤ koutou katoa.
