Tag Archives: Valuation

What AI Cannot Value: Indigenous Knowledge and Integrity in the Machine Age

April 21, 2026artificial intelligence, The Customary Land PodcastAboriginal knowledge, AI ethics, artificial intelligence, customary authority, customary land, fanua, fonua, Indigenous data sovereignty, Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous Land, land governance, machine age, pacific, Partnership Valuation, relational value, songlines, Spike Boydell, The Customary Land Podcast, Valuation, Vanua, whenuaCustomary Land Solutions

In this episode of The Customary Land Podcast, Spike Boydell reflects on a question that is becoming increasingly urgent in the age of artificial intelligence: what happens when machine systems begin to shape not only how we work, but how value itself is understood?

Drawing on Indigenous and customary worldviews across the Pacific and Australia — including vanua, fonua, fanua, whenua, and songlines — this episode argues that some of the most important forms of value are relational, sacred, lived, and non-substitutable. They cannot be reduced to data, market price, or optimisation logic without losing their meaning.

The episode places this question in conversation with the wider concerns explored in recent instalments of the series on mining legislative reform, the IVSC Exposure Draft, and partnership valuation. Together, these conversations point towards a common concern: that customary and Indigenous worlds are too often approached through inherited legal, economic, and technical frames that struggle to recognise value beyond extraction, compensation, and exchange.

This is not simply an episode about AI. It is about the limits of machine reasoning, the integrity of Indigenous knowledge, and the enduring importance of human-centred, place-based ways of knowing in a time increasingly shaped by codification and control.

If machines come to value everything, who will defend what cannot be valued?

You can listen to the podcast here.

Or simply search for The Customary Land Podcast in your preferred podcast player.

If you would like to receive the current manifesto draft that informs this episode, please email contact@customarylandsolutions.com

Partnership Valuation for Customary Land

April 14, 2026Uncategorized, Customary Landcustomary land, Fiji, Indigenous Land, pacific, tribal land, land governance, SUITU, Partnership Valuation, ValuationCustomary Land Solutions

In the latest episode of The Customary Land Podcast, I reflect on why compensation is often not enough when development takes place on customary land and sea.

What may appear at first to be a reasonable lease, licence, compensation package, or revenue formula can, over time, narrow customary authority, weaken stewardship, and leave future generations with less room to decide. The deeper issue is not simply the amount paid. It is whether development is legitimate, properly authorised, governable across time, and structured in a way that strengthens rather than hollows out the customary system that made the opportunity possible.

In this episode, I introduce the idea of Partnership Valuation as a more honest and durable way of thinking about economic engagement on customary land, tribal land, and Indigenous land. Rather than treating customary people as passive recipients of impact, Partnership Valuation begins from the reality that they are often part of the creation of value itself.

The episode also situates this discussion within SUITU, an emerging governance legitimacy spine centred on Stewardship, Use rights, Intangible values, Tenure security, and Unification. The central discipline is clear: governance first, legitimacy second, valuation only then.

You can watch the vodcast here.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Or simply search for The Customary Land Podcast in your preferred podcast player.

If you want to learn more about Partnership Valuation, or would like to know more about SUITU and the SUITU Governance Integrity Platform, please email: contact@customarylandsolutions.com

International Valuation Standards Still Fall Short on Customary Land

April 7, 2026Valuation on Customary Landcustomary land, customary land podcast, Customary Land Solutions, Fiji, Fiji Land, FPIC, Governance Legitimacy, Highest and Best Use, Indigenous Land, International Valuation Standards, IVS, land governance, Market Value, pacific, Pacific Land, Property rights, Spike Boydell, SUITU, tribal land, UN DRIP, UNDRIP, ValuationCustomary Land Solutions

The International Valuation Standards 2028 Exposure Draft makes an important advance by recognising informal, communal, collective and tribal land interests more explicitly than many earlier standards have done. But when viewed through the realities of customary land, it still raises a deeper concern: what happens when a global technical valuation framework tries to make sense of customary land without first understanding what customary land is?

In this episode of The Customary Land Podcast, Spike Boydell reflects on why that matters, why customary land cannot simply be treated as an awkward variation within an inherited valuation system, and why legitimacy, stewardship, authority and intergenerational responsibility must be held before valuation is allowed to arrive.

The episode explores the deeper structural problem of valuation-first thinking in customary, tribal and Indigenous land contexts. It also explains why concepts such as market value, highest and best use, and valuation-date closure may be too narrow when dealing with living relational systems shaped by layered rights, obligation, continuity and customary authority.

Watch or listen.

Or simply search for The Customary Land Podcast in your preferred podcast player.

If you would like a copy of our full submission to the International Valuation Standards Council, or more information about SUITU and the SUITU Governance Integrity Platform, please email:

contact@customarylandsolutions.com