Taitokerau Sustainable Development Research Group 2004
Professor Richard Benton
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Richard Benton is
from Kororareka (Russell) in the Bay of Islands. He first became interested
in research through the influence of Hoera Kanara, Pako Heka, Henare
Te Nana and other kaumätua who taught him about Te Aupouri, Te Rarawa
and Ngapuhi whakapapa and history in the early 1960s.
Sir James and other
of members of the Henare family, along with various kaumatua and kuia
who had been involved in politics in the 1930s and 40s, also encouraged
him to study the political history of the Northern Maori electorate
during the term of the late Tau Henare, MHR. (These studies are still
far from complete!) During this time he was also an apprentice under
the late George Waititi on carvings for Tü Matauenga wharenui, Otiria.
He began a career in research after being awarded a JR McKenzie Research
Fellowship in 1963 (he was Charge Hand at the Duke of Marlborough Hotel
bottle store at the time), and has been an advocate of bilingual education
in New Zealand since then.
He completed a PhD
in Linguistics at the University of Hawaii in 1971, and has studied,
written about and lectured on language policy, language rights, revitalization
of minority languages, the education of linguistic and cultural minorities,
and related subjects in the Pacific, Southeast Asia, Europe and North
America. He was a foundation member of Nga Kaiwhakapumau i te Reo, and
an active participant in planning strategy and preparing the brief for
the Te Reo Maori claim and subsequent court cases and negotiations with
government agencies and authorities initiated by Nga Kaiwhakapumau and
the NZ Maori Council.
He has had a long-standing
interest in holistic approaches to community development, and alternative
approaches to land use which could lead to sustainable organic food
production and the regeneration of native flora and fauna. From 1971-1996
he was Tumuaki, Te Wahanga Kaupapa Maori of the New Zealand Council
for Educational Research in Wellington, and then spent some time as
Deputy Director of the Centre for Maori Studies and Research at the
University of Waikato. While at the University of Waikato he was also involved in planning and later research for the FRST-funded research programme Laws and Institutions for Aotearoa / New Zealand, hosted by the University's Matahauariki Institute. He was also asked to take over the academic direction of the James Henare Maori Research Centre's Taitokerau Dictionary in 1999 to enable the late Professor Bruce Biggs, whose health was failing at the time, to concentrate on other urgent projects.
Richard Benton became Director
of the James Henare Maori Research Centre in October 1999, on the retirement of Dr Dorothy Urlich Cloher, and was the
convenor of the academic programme committee for the December 2000 Conference
of the International Consortium for Experiential Learning. Although the Taitokerau Dictionary was certainly the project which he would have liked to concentrate on, most of his time as Director of the Centre was devoted to the Centre's work on sustainable development and social and economic wellbeing in urban areas. However, he was responsible for ensuring that an on-line version of the dictionary was produced. This was launched in Kaeo in December 1991, and made available through the Centre's web site. Since the Centre went into recess at the beginning of 2004 and the University closed the web site, the dictionary project has continued as a voluntary activity, with the on-line files hosted and maintained on the through the "Rakiora" web site.
Dr Benton is an
active member of a number of national and international committees and
groups, including the Council of the Polynesian Society, the Biodiversity
Committee of the Royal Society of New Zealand, the International Advisory
Board of TerraLingua, the Waikato Branch of the NZ Tree Crops Association and the Taitokerau Organic Producers Incorporated Society. From 1997-2003 he was a member of the Social Science Subcommission
of the NZ National Commission for UNESCO. He retired as Director of
the James Henare Maori Research Centre at the end of 2003, and is currently
an Adjunct Professor (Research) at the University of Waikato, working with a team at Te Mätähauariki Institute on the Laws and Institutions research programme.
He is also an Honorary Research Fellow with the Department of Political Studies at the University of Auckland, and an Associate Researcher with the Ngati Hine research team working on the "Paeatatü - Landscape Transformation and Human Interaction in the Bay of Islands, 1769-1840" project, sponsored by the Marsden Fund.
When he gets a chance to escape from academic and administrative concerns,
Richard Benton is involved with his family in developing a small olive
and fig plantation and self-sustaining organic farm which will double
as an educational resource centre contributing to small-scale sustainable
development using natural systems approaches.
Fax (University of Waikato): +64 7 858-5032
Post: c/o Te Matahauariki Institute, University of Waikato
Private Bag 3125, Hamilton, Aotearoa/New Zealand
eMail r.benton at waikato.ac.nz
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