Home ›

Tipene-Matua, Bevan

14 Oct 2008

List Position: 
31
Electorate: 
Ikaroa-Rawhiti

Ko Takitimu te waka, Kahungunu, Ngai Tahu, Rangitane, me Raukawa oku iwi

Bevan Tipene Matua has worked for over 13 years as a researcher, regulator, and academic around Maori and indigenous peoples and new biotechnologies. Bevan was the inaugural Maori research fellow at the New Zealand Institute for Crop and Food Research in 1994 where he looked at intellectual property and plant variety rights and Maori.

After completing a thesis on the socio-cultural impacts of biotechnological inventions on Maori in 1996 he worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for the Ministry of Maori Development and then for the Environmental Risk Management Authority regulating the introduction of GMOs into Aotearoa New Zealand. He was then contracted as an external consultant by the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification in 2000 to assist Maori communities to respond to genetic engineering.

Bevan was formerly the Head of the Department of Maori at Canterbury University and Executive Director (Maori) and Director of Research and Development (Maori) at the Christchuch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. He has lead several indigenous research teams looking at the ethical, cultural and spiritual impact of genetic science on Maori and has recently moved north to build a earth straw home in his tribal village, Porangahau, and works as a contract research consultant and leads a Maori ethics team for the Rakaipaaka Health and Anestry Study, a longitudinal genetic study looking at the impacts of genetic variation on health.

Bevan has been a member of the Green Party and campaign manager for MP Metiria Turei for eight years and an advocate for the implementation of community development models founded on principles and values derived from the Spiritual (Io), Ancestral (whakapapa) and Natural (Papatuanuku).