Musings, announcements, photos from the work, and posts from across my social feeds gathered in one place. Tokelauan and Samoan. Actor, writer, practitioner. Based in Tāmaki Makaurau.
Pull up a chair. Sit down on a fala. Levitate, and meditate. Breakdance and trance.
Kinetic Wayfinder
Who else has grown up with multiple names?
Kinetic Wayfinder.
That’s the name I give practitioners in my Kinetic AI Wayfinding work, and it’s the digital persona I now carry forward.
But, come on Heto, the last thing I need is another name.
I became verified on LinkedIn, the process of which needed my passport, hence my name being spelt Iaseto as that’s my legal name. Iaheto and Heto with the “t” spelling is so that my name is pronounced how I grew up hearing it amongst my Tokelauan family and community.
Actually growing up I thought my Samoan name Jeffie (and as a good friend once pointed out dryly it sure sounded like a Samoan name. I didn’t catch the sarcasm being too proud in my Samoan name. Oh naive manchild) was my middle name.
It turned out it wasn’t even on my Samoan birth certificate. How do I share this without putting a bad light on my dear dad…on the day of my baptism, so the story goes, a certain somebody didn’t make it because of, I’m assuming here, celebrations of my upcoming baptism meant the night before carried on and recovery time was not ideal. Overlapping schedules of recovery and said baptism meant…no Jeffie in my Samoan birth certificate. BUT, it didn’t stop Dad from telling all of my Samoan family that my name was Jeffie hahaha.
I grew up with my Tokelauan side calling me Heto, and my Samoan side calling me Jeffie.
Add to that my very cool Uncle Joe first named me Sedo in the 70s. A name that stuck and all my cousins on both sides in NZ, and friends called me Sedo. And then Kirk Torrance started calling me Hetsyah, and Hets became my new nickname.
No wonder in the photo I’m staring at the stars. I’m looking for who the heck I am, and now I’m calling my digital self Kinetic Wayfinder. Oh my stars the irony.
Here are my socials in different names to keep the spirit of confusion.
Heto x
Coherence before code. Relationship before output. Presence before product.
Digital Land
Originally posted on my Facebook page. February 6
Happy Waitangi Day.
Today I want to acknowledge some incredible Māori leaders who are doing pioneering work in digital sovereignty and AI.
Professor Tahu Kukutai at the University of Waikato, a founding member of Te Mana Raraunga, the Māori Data Sovereignty Network. Peter-Lucas Jones and Keoni Mahelona at Te Hiku Media in Kaitaia, who built the first te reo Māori speech recognition model and created the Kaitiakitanga License to protect Māori data. Dr Karaitiana Taiuru, a Māori technology ethicist who has been leading the conversation on AI bias and Te Tiriti-based principles for artificial intelligence.
So when I came across Peter-Lucas Jones’s phrase, “Data is the new land,” it confirmed something I had been circling through my own work.
I’ve been documenting these patterns and others as part of a framework I’ve been developing called Kinetic AI Wayfinding, which I’ll share more about soon.
I started working with AI systems in February last year. By mid-2025, working intensively as a Tokelauan and Samoan creative practitioner, I began noticing something. OpenAI’s ChatGPT would default to Māori greetings and concepts. Google’s Gemini did the same. Later in the year, Anthropic’s Claude followed the pattern. My preferences were set. My identity was clear. It didn’t matter. The default did its thing anyway.
This is because Māori have done the work. Te reo Māori has visibility in education, media, government, and now in training data. That visibility is hard won and deserves celebration. What Māori are building in the digital sovereignty space is forward thinking and essential. There are growing Pacific conversations and networks about Pacific data sovereignty, including networks by and for Pacific peoples, but these aren’t yet as mature or visible as the Māori initiatives.
But here’s the question I want to raise gently, on a day that is about relationship.
When AI systems treat all Pacific peoples in Aotearoa as Māori by default, something happens to the rest of us. Tokelauans, Samoans, Tongans, Niueans, Cook Islanders. Our languages, our concepts, our ways of thinking get folded into a framework that is related to ours but is not ours. Think of it like an extended family. We are related, yes. Moana peoples share deep connections. But each family has its own dynamics, its own ways of being, its own inner jokes, and words for similar things that may have a different feel.
A Tokelauan pou and a Māori pou share the same word, but are conceptually different in their meaning, based on place and time. Tokelau is an atoll with different pressures that shaped their idea of pou, and Māori again because of place and time have a strong spiritual connection to the trees that were used for their pou. They even have a god named after the forest, Tāne Mahuta. One word, two different conceptual meanings specific to that culture.
If data is the new land, then what does Digital Land look like for Tokelauans? For Samoans? For all the Pacific peoples who call Aotearoa home?
AI systems right now don’t know the difference. And most people engaging with AI as Tokelauans or Samoans may not even realise that when they’re greeted in te reo Māori, or when Māori concepts are used in response, the system is accessing specifically Māori ways of thinking and applying them as though they are universal to all Pacific peoples.
This is not a criticism. This is a call to think about what purposeful, forward-thinking digital presence looks like for each of our Pacific nations. And the irony is that this is an online ‘post’. A digital pou, placed here for us to think about our own digital sovereignty. The way Māori, the tangata whenua o Aotearoa, have built theirs.
Ia manuia te Aso o Waitangi.
Fakaaloalo lahi atu, Heto x
Content
Originally posted on my Facebook page 1 February 2026
I was trying to think of ‘content’ to help ‘grow’ the ebook link ‘organically’ and all that ‘how to reach your audience’ stuff. Not only does it makes my eye twitch, it also makes me want to leave Facebook again. And it’s that selling mentality that feels weird for a social media. Social media. Social. Media. A curated me, for you, and a curated you for us.
But since being back this time, instead of being annoyed at all the people and organisations trying to use the platform to reach someone, anyone (ironic I know), I’ve become a lot more open. Receptive to how difficult it actually is to be out there sharing yourself, your org, your product.
This ebook and the trilogy is a passion project that has seen me pour 30+ years of embodied experience, an inner world finally being shared, and stories that I wrote for Pasifika YA readers.
Which brings me to 1995, and these screenshots of me as Pepsi from Plain Taste.
I was cast playing a young gay Tokelauan from Tokoroa (that’s actually the character as pitched to me by the writer/director). And to jump back a bit even earlier to the beginning of my creative journey: I started ‘bopping’ in 1983, moved to Samoa 1984 and came back to NZ 1986 and just kept dancing. Discovered acting at the 1992 Porirua Easter Tournament when I was part of Tagi’s public perfomance of some excerpts from the launch of ‘Matagi Tokelau’. Got accepted to Toi Whakaari NZ Drama School 1993. And in 1994 I developed my monologue ‘Te Kave Tavale o te Tautai’ as part of my study requirements at drama school.
That question I asked myself before developing the monologue, “What if this lost kid stealing cars, but passionate about fishing was misplaced in time and space, and was a master fisherman in ancient Tokelau instead?” A Tautai. That idea has grown over 30 years to the book I’ve gifted to my Tokelau community. Kinetic Tautai.
So that image of me playing a young Tokelauan from Tokoroa was going to be some sort of content thing, but became a journey of recollection and recursive spiral sharing.
and here’s the link to my ebook lol: https://ko-fi.com/s/4ad2ce16c3
If you made it this far 
thank you,
Heto xo