Principles of Māori data sovereignty were embedded in Village’s constitutional framework from its earliest architecture. As the platform evolved, the influence of tikanga Māori — kaitiakitanga, rangatiratanga, whanaungatanga — gained momentum across the governance model, the AI safety framework, and the support architecture. Today it is the pivotal characteristic that distinguishes Village from platforms built on Silicon Valley assumptions.
That influence shapes how support works. This is not a corporate support programme with tiered plans and response-time SLAs. It is a model grounded in tuakana-teina — the experienced guiding the newer — that starts with agentic technology on sovereign infrastructure and ends with Māori-led professional services offered to the world.
Here is what exists now, and where it is heading.
Phase 1 — Now
What You Get Today
Every Village ships with four support channels. No additional cost. No upgrade required.
AI Help Widget
Every page in your Village has a help widget. It runs on a locally-hosted AI model — no data leaves the system, no third-party service processes your questions. The model understands your Village type. A governance Village gets governance-specific answers. A whānau Village responds in te reo Māori.
It handles substantive questions, not just FAQ lookups. Ask it about tenant isolation and it will explain the architecture. Ask it about rūnanga in Te Tai Tokerau and it will list them with their governing bodies. Ask it how to run a formal vote and it will walk you through the deliberation workflow step by step.
Owner & Moderator Briefing
A comprehensive reference document covering every feature, every role, every setting. Attached to your commissioning email and available inside your Village in five languages. Read it at your pace.
Feedback Channel
The primary support mechanism. Submit issues, bug reports, or feature requests via the feedback menu. Each submission is investigated immediately and agentically: the system checks the issue against the codebase, verifies the problem, and resolves where possible — typically within seconds. Only genuinely ambiguous issues surface for human review. The target is 99% automated resolution with no human bottleneck.
Introductory Video Session
Book a one-to-one video call with the platform founder. This is not a technical support session — the help widget and feedback system handle technical questions. The purpose is to meet, understand what your community needs, and establish a working relationship.
Phase 2
Tuakana-Teina: Village-to-Village Mentoring
As established Villages build experience, their owners become natural mentors. Phase 2 formalises this.
An experienced owner from one Village can be given temporary advisory access to a new Village — time-limited, audited, automatically revoked on expiry. They can see the setup, offer guidance on governance configuration, and help the new owner find their feet. The two Villages federate for the duration: direct video calls, presence visibility, and optional shared channels.
This is not outsourced support. It is one community leader helping another because they have been where the new owner is now. The experienced moderator sets their own availability. The new owner books sessions when they need them.
Tuakana-teina is the Māori model of mentoring: the older or more experienced (tuakana) guiding the younger or less experienced (teina). The relationship is reciprocal — the tuakana learns through teaching, and the teina grows through guided experience. It is not hierarchy. It is whanaungatanga — kinship through shared purpose.
Phase 3
Mentoring Network
As Village count grows, mentoring scales into a peer network. Experienced owners register their expertise, languages, and Village types. New communities discover available mentors through the Connected Villages system. Mentoring activities link to the onboarding checklist, so both sides can track progress.
Recognition is not gamified. There are no leaderboards or point systems. An experienced mentor’s mana is visible through the lineage of Villages they have helped establish — whakapapa, not badges.
Phase 4
Indigenous Communities Beyond Aotearoa
The sovereignty principles behind Village — data control, self-governance, cultural adaptation — are not specific to Māori. They apply to any indigenous community that has experienced the consequences of having its governance, communications, and data mediated by platforms designed in Silicon Valley.
Phase 4 extends the platform and its support network to indigenous communities overseas. First Nations in Australia. Native American nations. Sāmi peoples in the Nordics. Pacific Island communities. Any indigenous group building governance on their own terms.
Access is on a koha basis — contribute what you can. The platform adapts through its vocabulary system and polycentric governance rules. Each community configures it according to their own protocols and languages. No code changes required.
Māori who have built deep expertise through Phases 2 and 3 become the natural mentors for these communities. This is peer support between peoples with shared experiences, not consulting from above. Māori have navigated digital sovereignty challenges on this platform. They know the practical realities. That knowledge transfers.
Phase 5
Māori-Led Professional Services
Phase 5 is where the model changes fundamentally.
For generations, Western consultants have advised indigenous communities on governance and technology. The flow of expertise has been one-directional: from the mainstream to the margins. Phase 5 reverses this.
Māori who have developed genuine expertise through operating Villages, mentoring other communities, and supporting indigenous groups overseas establish professional services for non-indigenous organisations worldwide. European associations. International NGOs. Professional bodies. Community groups. Any organisation that wants sovereign governance infrastructure with competent support.
This is a commercial service at commercial rates. Māori set the terms, the rates, and the methods. Revenue flows back to Māori communities and individuals. The platform facilitates this — it does not extract from it.
This is not aspirational. It is the logical outcome of building genuine capability through Phases 1 to 4. When you own the expertise and the platform operates on sovereign infrastructure, the commercial opportunity follows. What makes it distinctive is who owns it. Not a platform company. Not a consultancy. The people who built the knowledge, from their own communities, on their own terms.
What This Means for Your Village
If you are starting a Village today, Phase 1 is yours now. The help widget, the briefing, the setup booking, the feedback channel — all available. Use them.
If you are an experienced owner by the time Phase 2 arrives, you can choose to mentor new communities. Nobody is obligated. But the infrastructure will be there when you are ready.
If you are Māori, Phases 4 and 5 are about something larger than support services. They are about indigenous expertise becoming a global resource — recognised, compensated, and sovereign.
It starts with your Village. Where it ends is up to you.
Village is accepting applications from communities, governance bodies, and organisations. Founding communities receive permanently locked rates.