Chris Kavelin
About Chris

Two decades of cross-cultural work in Indigenous medical knowledge and law.

Chris holds a PhD in Law. His thesis, The Protection of Indigenous Medical Knowledge: Towards the Transformation of Law to Engage Indigenous Spiritual Concerns, examined how legal systems can be transformed to better protect Indigenous medical knowledge and engage the spiritual concerns at its heart. He has worked with Māori, Aboriginal, and Native American communities, and has been commissioned by heads of state and various Indigenous nations on questions of intellectual property, provenance, and access and benefit-sharing. He has lived on Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, and now lives on Wurundjeri lands, Melbourne.

Mission statement

Our mission

Our mission is to harness the wisdom of Indigenous knowledge to address the most pressing global issues of our era. We empower both Indigenous nation building and non-Indigenous communities worldwide with innovative solutions that honour and integrate the diverse gifts of global Indigenous knowledge with experts from the four directions.

Statement of principles

Four principles that guide this work

01

Only the people of the land can speak for the land

Every project begins by identifying the traditional owners — the Tangata Whenua, to use the Māori term — seeking their permission and guidance, and inviting them into a partnership that gives them primacy at every stage. This protects the "Va" — the sacred space between people, communities, spirit, and the natural world — which is not just an ethical consideration but a fundamental Indigenous law.

Read more

Every Indigenous nation has a history of intimate and loving intergenerational connection to the land on which they dwell. Because of this intimacy, it gives them a privileged understanding of what will benefit or harm all living things on their land. Therefore, their laws are vital to learn, understand, and follow. Their love animates those laws, understanding, and connection; therefore, they should guide all involved in each project.

Additionally, in some Indigenous communities, the accuracy of oral tradition and intergenerational knowledge is preserved by the principle of ensuring that the highest Indigenous tohunga/master/authority for each type of knowledge is consulted for decisions related to the knowledge they carry. This is also why it is important to always acknowledge the whakapapa/genealogy of the origins of knowledge — it prevents the dilution, distortion, and potentially dangerous misapplication of that knowledge.

All intellectual property shared by communities remains their own, and a model of IP protection has been developed to ensure that.

02

Ancestral guidance follows each nation's own traditions

Every Indigenous nation carries its own spiritual technologies for connecting with the ancestral realm — dreaming dialogue with ancestors, prayer and fasting, sweat lodge, vision quest, and others distinct to each people. These are not a shared toolkit: each is drawn on only within the protocols of the nation it belongs to, and only through partnership with that nation's own knowledge-holders.

Read more

In practice, this can mean consulting a community's own Elders or spiritual authorities before a decision is finalised, letting a ceremony's own timing take precedence over a project deadline, or deferring to guidance received through one nation's specific practice rather than assuming it carries over to another. The aim is to ensure intergenerational wisdom forms part of every decision made, always on the terms of the tradition it comes from.

03

Relationships follow the traditions of the land's custodians

Every Indigenous nation has unique protocols for how two groups meet and form a new relationship, and each partnership begins by understanding and following the specific cultural traditions of the land and its custodians.

Read more

For Australian Aboriginal peoples, it is traditional for visitors to sit and wait at the boundary of the land until the traditional owners approach them. At that point there is an exchange of gifts and the giving of skin names, which identify the newcomer's position as family in specific ways and clarify how they are to relate to others of the differing tribes.

For Māori in Aotearoa, visitors also wait outside the marae, and a complex series of protocols and challenges make up the pōwhiri — honouring the ancestral realm and the history between the peoples, and culminating in the exchange of each other's breath and the weaving together of the two peoples as one.

Partners engaging with this work can expect a relationship-building process grounded in these principles. Exploring the challenges and blessings of intergenerational history is part of that initial exchange, giving capacity for justice and healing, and allowing visitors to be woven into the dreaming of the land they live on with integrity and good relations with its custodians.

04

Contracts follow Indigenous spiritual principles of economics

Rather than centring the value of time, products, outcomes, or transactional services, the prime value in any agreement is relationship and reciprocity — an open, infinite spiral that grows with each exchange, like a symphony, increasing the capacity of all partners.

Read more

This also acknowledges the relationships, contributions, and history of the ancestral dimension for all involved. On a practical level, it means recognising that the value of knowledge behind a service is rarely held by one individual — it has often been collectively developed over many generations. An equivalent is how a pharmaceutical company may sell a pill with a low face-value production cost, but whose real value lies in the many years of development, and sometimes sacrifice, that went into the ability to make it.