Te Ora Fenua means all island life in Tahitian. This project brings Tahitian cultural practitioners through Association Te Pu Atitia and the Gump Field Station on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. This work together is to co-create research aimed at understanding the rich biodiversity on the island. Moorea is one of the most studied islands in the world, and rarely have Tahitian cultural experts been engaged in designing or developing research questions and the focus of the research. In a global context, where cultural knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) have significant value and benefit for the sciences, Te Ora Fenua Data Trust brings the cultural and the scientific together in a respectful, careful and non-extractive way. 

Through Te Ora Fenua Data Trust, Jane is working to weave ethical, legal and social elements into the research practices and the collective benefits that can derive from this work. This means she is creating the overarching framework where cultural knowledge and TEK help guide research (e.g., the selection of species) and are protected through attention to community intellectual and cultural property. New strategies for maintaining community interests in the data across the data lifecycle (using Local Contexts’ Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Notices and Labels for instance) also ensure proper data provenance and future connection of the data back to Moorea can happen.