Indigenous Community Governance Project

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• Indigenous Community Governance Project
• Capacity Development In Indigenous Communities

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Background context

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are
  2 of Australian population growing fast (3
  growth rate) over 200 years of colonisation has
  had devastating impacts on them.
• Indigenous male life expectancy at birth, 59
  years, 18 years lower than other Australians
  female life expectancy at birth 65 years, 17
  years lower than other Australians.
• These rates many developing countries at the
  lower end of human development such as Bolivia
  (63), Bangladesh (61).
• On many social and economic indicators (e.g.
  education, health, income, employment)
  Indigenous Australians are the most disadvantaged
  excluded in the country.
• Majority of Indigenous Australians live in urban
  and regional areas, but in many remote areas they
  are the majority of the population and their
  social/economic disadvantage is
• most pronounced.
• Strengthening the governance of Indigenous
  communities is seen as a key factor in turning
  this situation around.

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Roles of non-Indigenous civil society

• The Australian National University and an NGO
  Reconciliation Australia are working in
  partnership to
• Raise funds for the research from governments
  research funding sources
• Conduct the research in partnership with the
  Indigenous organisations/communities leaders as
  well as governments
• Feed the results to governments others working
  with Indigenous communities
• Advocate for the findings to be used to inform
  government policies and program approaches
• Share the learnings with a wider range of
  Indigenous communities leaders to inform their
  work
• Develop strategies tools for Indigenous
  communities to use to build stronger governance

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Roles of Indigenous civil society (1)

• Civil society actors are expressing Indigenous
  interests which are generally excluded/marginalise
  d/ poorly addressed
• Providing a point of negotiation with other
  actors (private sector governments)
• Providing a range of culturally appropriate
  social and other services providing the glue
  holding the community together
• Assisting Indigenous people negotiate their way
  through non-Indigenous systems (legal,
  bureaucratic etc)
• Claiming land (under Native Title law)

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Roles of Indigenous civil society (2)

• Expressing Indigenous culture identity
• Maintaining strengthening culture
• Demonstrating successful models of Indigenous
  service delivery economic development
• Facilitating their customary economies hybrid
  economies
• Advocating based on these successes
• Building Indigenous governance through networks
  (towards self-determination)
• Partnering with others (govts, researchers,
  business) to advance Indigenous interests.

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The capacity building work

• Currently researching how Indigenous
  organisations develop governance capacity (and
  assisting as we go).
• The capacity building aim is to strengthen
  governance to enable Indigenous organisations to
  pursue their own goals more successfully.
• The ICG Project aims to learn from the case
  studies to develop strategies tools for
  governance capacity building of Indigenous
  communities across Australia.
• Linking The ANU Reconciliation Australia (RA)
  - towards developing an Indigenous Governance
  Manual electronic Toolkit which the research
  is feeding directly into.
• Also linking with RAs Indigenous Governance
  Awards.

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Researcher approaches to capacity building

• Researchers have responded to needs identified by
  Indigenous orgs e.g
• Helping remote communities understand a rapidly
  changing policy environment make organisational
  adjustments or responses
• Facilitating Indigenous people to re-trace their
  governance histories as a basis for establishing
  contemporary governance arrangements which have
  cultural legitimacy
• Helping complex organisations clarify roles
  relationships among themselves ( with
  non-Indigenous CEOs) to reduce internal tensions
• Researching community wishes and blockages to
  desired changes in a particular setting
  assisting Indigenous players to address them
• Community development support to devise new
  governance arrangements, and customised
  institutions ( eg codes, policies, strategies)
  based on Indigenous norms and values
• Assisting to improve communication between
  Indigenous and non-Indigenous systems actors
• Assistance with meeting compliance requirements.

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Enabling factors (1) Internal

• Leadership
• Cultural legitimacy of organisational governance
  arrangements
• Network governance arrangements with clear
  roles/responsibilities at different layers
  levels
• Principles of relational autonomy
  subsidiarity practiced
• Building own culturally-derived institutions
• Having clear values goals
• Indigenous-led Indigenous-driven
• Overcoming conflict through processes to manage it

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Enabling factors (2) External Context

• Control over decision-making
• Stability of and information re policy frameworks
• Facilitating partnerships which bring expertise,
  resources, wider networks etc
• Trusted, sensitive support
• Good community development approaches to
  governance-building
• Place-based community development training,
  on-the-job mentoring

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Indigenous Design Principles

• There are some key principles institutional
  mechanisms that guide peoples thinking about
  building their governance arrangements
• These seem to be common across different types of
  remote, rural and urban communities, in diverse
  conditions
• Three key principles are
• networked governance,
• relational autonomy
• subsidiarity

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Indigenous networked governance

• Encompasses networks layers of groups,
  organisations, communities - with associated
  layers of roles responsibilities
• Emphasis is on sorting out relationships and
  linkages
• Places decision-making responsibility at closest
  possible level to the people affected
  (subsidiarity)
• Higher level decisions authority where more
  inclusive matters require it (subsidiarity)
• Balances dispersed local residence with wider
  regional representative voice (relational
  autonomy)
• Relatively egalitarian networks, with nodes where
  power authority concentrated (relational
  autonomy)
• Nodal leadership with thick networks of
  Indigenous leaders good links into
  non-Indigenous systems.

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Remote Network dispersed residence, hub
organisation community
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Urban Network Family of organisations with
different legal relationships purposes
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Leadership - makes a major difference

• Leaders have to mobilise consensus maintain
  consent to lead - legitimacy
• Competition and conflict between leaders in a
  community or region can seriously undermine
  governance
• In organisations, big challenges for leadership
  revolve around relationships between boards
  CEOs
• Greater understanding clarity in separation of
  powers
• Problems of isolated managers and isolated
  councillors
• Forced imposition of western ideas about
  leadership, electoral processes equality
  unlikely to succeed change has to come from
  within.

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We are seeing strong networked governance when

• People are working through their relationships
  and shared connections to build networked
  identities and local autonomy
• People work through their governance histories to
  reinforce existing or develop new connections
• There is support for the decision making
  capacity, and agreed roles responsibilities of
  each layer in the governance network
• People are building their institutions a
  culture of governance
• Leadership networks are strong with shared goals

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Constraining Factors

• Contextual factors such as poor state of
  Indigenous health, education, housing,
  infrastructure, transport, communications etc
• Policy frameworks which provide little control
  and insufficient resources into Indigenous hands
  - low cultural legitimacy
• Efforts to reduce the scope of Indigenous
  decision-making through policies of
  mainstreaming
• Government mindsets relating to compliance
  rather than enabling Indigenous capacity
• Racist attitudes

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Cultural Legitimacy Power

• The case study research raises the question.
• Do the conditions currently exist for achieving
  culturally legitimate governance arrangements?
• - There is a major power imbalance
• - There is cultural contestation between
  Indigenous non-Indigenous systems.
• When people have power to make decisions we are
  seeing their cultural legitimacy increase.
• Cultural legitimacy AND practical capacity are
  needed to get things done.

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The Governance of Government

• excessive policy fluidity
• plethora of program funding arrangements
• mismatch between whole-of-government policy
  implementation policy evaporation or failure
• several whole-of-government policies
• departmental silos program territorialism
• Low governance capacity of government of public
  sector staff systems

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Capacity building interventions

• Major unmet need is capacity development support
  customised, local, sustained
• Delivery funding is ad hoc, poorly coordinated
  erratically funded.
• Facilitated through community development
  approach is more effective
• Indigenous-driven towards Indigenous goals
  mobilises capacity
• Institution-building develops capacity
  effectiveness
• Changing external environment can reduce or
  enhance capacity depending on the organisations
  ability to respond (i.e. capacity to analyse the
  environment, strategically assess it adapt is a
  critical capacity).

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Constraints of the Projects intervention

• Unwillingness or inability of governments to
  respond to findings to date re incapacitating
  policy frameworks
• Major capacity constraints within governments and
  in arrangements between governments re Indigenous
  communities
• Difficulties and costs of communicating the ideas
  with Indigenous communities (resourcing issues)
• Unsustainable intervention process (but trying to
  establish ongoing tools, networks which will
  sustain)

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• Ends