Indigenous good governance begins with communities and institutions

We have reached a pivotal time in Indigenous affairs when for the first time, national attention is being paid to the horror of Indigenous family violence in this country.

For the first time, an Australian Prime Minister has held a summit in the national capital to listen to concerns and ideas on this issue from a group of Indigenous leaders.

For the first time, we are reading editorials about the suffering of Indigenous women and children in our newspapers. For the first time, perhaps we have a chance to do something solid, sensible, sensitive and coordinated to stop the violence that is destroying our communities.

So what does all this have to do with the fundamental issue of native title?

What does it have to do with Indigenous governance?

To answer these questions, let me go back to the preamble to the Native Title Act of 1993.

It begins:

The people whose descendants are now known as Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders were the inhabitants of Australia before European settlement.

They have been progressively dispossessed of their lands. This dispossession occurred largely without compensation, and successive governments have failed to reach a lasting and equitable agreement with Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders concerning the use of their lands.

It goes on to refer to the High Court's Mabo Decision and the overturning of the myth of terra nullius. And then it shifts from the language of fact, into a promising language of intent:

The people of Australia intend:

• to rectify the consequences of past injustices by the special measures contained in this Act, announced at the introduction of this Act into the Parliament, or agreed on by the Parliament from time to time, for securing the adequate advancement and protection of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders; and
• to ensure that Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders receive the full recognition and status within the Australian nation to which history, their prior rights and interests, and their rich and diverse culture, fully entitle them to aspire. "

No wonder we were excited.

No wonder we imagined that the return of our traditional lands, and all that that righting of a great wrong represented, would turn things around for us.

And on that basis native title became somewhat of a sacred cow, an area of Indigenous affairs that took on an almost religious status for those involved at all levels and on all sides of the debate.

This was big!

This could change everything.

Yet, here we are 10 years later, having to face the fact that native title hasn't and won't change anything much at all unless we start to see it for what it is and always was - just one piece of the jigsaw of putting things right for Indigenous Australians.

Let me answer the question about what family violence has to do with native title very bluntly by expressing the harsh reality that just because an Aboriginal woman is being bashed on her traditional land will not make the ground any softer when her head hits it.

Good governance provides the link between all these other issues, all these other priorities and concerns that can make native title really mean something to people in communities.

If we are truly committed to the notion of self-determination, we cannot begin to pursue it without instruments of governance.

If we do not have these structures, we cannot engage with government other than on an ad hoc, individual basis that leaves us vulnerable. We cannot engage in partnerships with business, we cannot benefit from the essential nature of our communal identity as Indigenous people.

If we want to acquire native title and manage it for the benefit of our communities, this cannot be achieved without effective governance both during the process of acquisition and once the native title is acquired.

We can't possible hope to negotiate a treaty or any other form of meaningful national agreement if we don't have governance structures that legitimise our side of the negotiation.

Researchers involved in the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development started out, some 15 years ago now, with assumptions about what might work and what mightn't in the governance of Indigenous communities.

What is fundamental about the Harvard research is that its findings are counterintuitive. They defy all assumptions about the foundation of good governance, in particular the assumption that if communities have access to viable economies, if they occupy land with a strong resource base, if they have relationships with mining companies and access to royalties, they surely have all the incentive they need to become healthy communities.

What the research has found is that communities with immediate access to those kinds of resources and supports actually fall over more often than communities that analyse their cultural base and build governance structures upon that base.

Communities that make a conscious decision to go back to the beginning and explore where their institutions are out of sync with their cultures - not only traditional culture but the day-to-day culture of how the community actually operates - are the ones that prosper over the long term.

The direct relevance of this research to native title could hardly be clearer.

For too long, we've operated on the assumption that if you've got native title, your community is going to be OK. But what we've been seeing over the years is that organisations, including native title representative bodies and communities themselves, who have had the responsibility of managing benefits associated with native title simply haven't had the capacity to do it effectively for the benefit of the people.

The caution we have to make about the Harvard work, is that while the research holds important lessons and parallels for Australia, for us to think we can import it outright would be inappropriate and lazy.

Which is why Reconciliation Australia is coordinating a groundbreaking project with BHP Billiton to identify and promote all the different aspects that constitute good Indigenous governance in Australia.

This project has particular resonance at the moment when there is so much attention being paid to Aboriginal organisations being dysfunctional, when there is so much soul searching going on among the Indigenous leadership about the responsibility and legitimacy of that leadership.

Its central focus is to work with Indigenous organisations and communities and, where appropriate, with governments to imbed Indigenous governance as a coordinated, bipartisan, national strategy beyond the electoral cycle that sees policies come and go.

Our hope is that in the first five years, we can build up a body of work that demonstrates the value of working with communities on their own terms and over time to generate sustainable improvements for Indigenous people.

We would hope to prove that good governance leads to significantly improved prospects for economic independence. And also to make it clear that the equation doesn't necessarily work in reverse - economic independence, with or without native title, doesn't necessarily lead to good governance.

We need to be prepared to recognise where native title fits in the jigsaw of reconciliation and Indigenous affairs. We need to recognise where we have not lived up to the promise of the Act.

We need to face up to a failure of imagination and competence.

It is not yet a lost opportunity but it's an opportunity in the process of being lost.

To rescue it and start realising this opportunity for what it is, native title must be liberated from the constraints imposed by legal technicalities so that we can take advantage of the culture of negotiation it created.