Indigenous good governance begins with communities and institutions

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.