Indigenous Governance Structures in the Southwest of Western Australia

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Indigenous Governance Structures in the Southwest of Western Australia Manuhuia Barcham Introduction On the 19 th of September, 2006, Justice Murray Wilcox ruled that the Noongar 1 people continue to hold Native Title over more than 6000 square kilometres, covering Perth and its surrounds. This first Native Title win in any Australian capital city came about through the South- West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC). In 2003, the SWALSC managed to unite the majority of competing, overlapping claimant groups to the area in question in south-western Australia, some of whom had individually been seeking native title since the mid-1990s. Noongar lands stretch from Jurien in the North through to Dalwallinu in the Northeast and Hopetoun in the Southeast, and all areas in between. Numbering in excess of 27 000 individuals, Noongar represent one of the largest single indigenous groupings in Australia Noongar 1 I use the term Noongar here, although it is variously spelt in other publications as Nyoongar and Nyungar. 1

description

An analysis and discussion of three governance structures for Indigenous Australians in the southwest of Western Australia. In doing so it provides some initial indications about the conditions for the emergence of sustainable and legitimate Indigenous governance structures within Australia. The analysis shows that cultural legitimacy and government funding appear to be key constraining or enabling factors in the creation and sustainability of Indigenous governance structures in Australia.

Transcript of Indigenous Governance Structures in the Southwest of Western Australia

Page 1: Indigenous Governance Structures in the Southwest of Western Australia

Indigenous Governance Structures in the Southwest of Western Australia

Manuhuia Barcham

Introduction

On the 19th of September, 2006, Justice Murray Wilcox ruled that the Noongar1

people continue to hold Native Title over more than 6000 square kilometres, covering

Perth and its surrounds. This first Native Title win in any Australian capital city came

about through the South-West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC). In 2003,

the SWALSC managed to unite the majority of competing, overlapping claimant

groups to the area in question in south-western Australia, some of whom had

individually been seeking native title since the mid-1990s.

Noongar lands stretch from Jurien in the North through to Dalwallinu in the Northeast

and Hopetoun in the Southeast, and all areas in between. Numbering in excess of 27

000 individuals, Noongar represent one of the largest single indigenous groupings in

Australia Noongar families are generally spread over a discrete set of towns (a run)

which are recognised by other Noongar families as belonging to that family. Within

these families, Noongar individuals generally claim one town as their primary town.

These links to country and to other members of the family are maintained by ongoing

movement around these family runs. This form of organisation has “enabled the

Nyungar people to maintain themselves as a discrete socio-political group within the

wider Australian society” (Birdsall 1988: 137). The families are the key marker of

Noongar identity both in the non-Noongar world and in relation to other Noongar

families.

In the wake of the history of enforced transportation and institutionalisation of

Noongar over the last century, many Noongar families often ended up residing great

1 I use the term Noongar here, although it is variously spelt in other publications as Nyoongar and Nyungar.

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distances from their traditional country. In these situations people generally tended to

return home when the situation permitted. This process has created a ‘line of towns’

through which individuals and groups passed on their way home to their country

(Birdsall 1988: 142). One of the side effects of this forced relocation of individuals

and families and their eventual return over time to their own ‘country’ has been the

creation of a broader web of kinship across the Southwest as individuals from

disparate regions of Noongar country had children together. This broader kinship web

plays an important role in the creation of a broader Noongar corporate identity –

linking together as it does families across the entire Southwest.

In the lead-up to the 2006 Native Title determination, SWALSC has worked with and

through these kinship connections in a very tumultuous governance environment.

Indeed, the first decade of the twenty-first century was witness to dramatic changes

in state-indigenous relations in Australia. One of the greatest changes, the abolition of

ATSIC in March 2005, led to the promotion of regional governance structures for

Indigenous Australia through the policy mechanism of Regional Participation

Agreements (RPAs). Although the approach was dropped with a change of Federal

government in 2007, it is instructive to consider why SWALSC, rather than other

organisations, survived this period. Alongside SWALSC, Community Action Groups

(CAGs) and the Noongar Partnership Alliance (NPA) were touted by their various

supporters as being able to form the basis of a regional governance structure

responding to the RPA requirement. Why, then, did the SWALSC survive?

This chapter undertakes an historical analysis of the emergence of three organisational

structures – CAGs, the NPA, and SWALSC. It then analyses the factors which led to

the continued existence of SWALSC as the most likely candidate for a regional

governance structure in the Southwest. The chapter shows that in the current

Australian governance landscape, both government support and cultural legitimacy

are important means for Indigenous groups in Australia to create and maintain

Indigenous governance structures.

Community Action Groups

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First established following the recommendations of the 1998 Kaata Wangkinyiny

Region Noongar Plan, CAGs were local level representative structures whose

membership was drawn from all the Aboriginal family groupings in a community.

CAGs were designed to provide a forum for all Aboriginal families in a community to

have a say on issues which concerned them, as well as to provide a mechanism for the

local Aboriginal community to provide information to, and receive information from,

government agencies and other service providers. CAGs operated largely as conduits

for information, although there was informal discussion about the possibilities of

CAGs forming the basis for a broader regional governance structure for Indigenous

Australians in the Southwest around 2004 and 2005. While the initial push behind the

creation of CAGs may have come from Noongar residents in particular communities,

its ongoing development was mainly driven by the Western Australian Department of

Indigenous Affairs.

The first step in the creation of the CAG was the process of family-mapping. At

community meetings individuals and families would determine what the family

groupings or clusters were in the community. Once these were decided,the respective

groupings nominated a representative or representatives to sit on the CAG. Individual

members may represent one family or a cluster of associated families. And, like

SWALSC’s working groups which I discuss later, CAG members were selected by

families in their own way with family members being accountable to their own

families. As such, each CAG was slightly different depending on what type of

structure the various families in the community wished to adopt.

However, family representation on the CAGs was “not necessarily based on

traditional Noongar structures of community organisation, native title or customary

associations to land” (Smythe 2005: 7). Instead, CAG membership was determined by

contemporary community residency, with CAGs providing not only for traditional

owners but also for historic peoples who now reside within a particular community.

And so, in Katanning for example, a family mapping exercise was conducted which

then led to the creation of nine family clusters. Of these nine clusters eight were local

traditional owner families while one was comprised of families originally from

outside the region (both Noongar and non-Noongar).

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CAGs, unlike the structures to be discussed later, , were concerned largely with the

issue of service provision. In this respect, then, it is best that CAGs have as wide a

representational base as possible as service delivery issues often concern not only

traditional owners but all Aboriginal people within a community. CAGs did not,

during their existence, appear to be concerned with issues of speaking for country, but

if this issue had come up then some thought would have to go into how CAGs were

constituted given the widespread belief in Indigenous Australia that only traditional

owners have the ability to speak for country. (This issue had, and still has, the

potential to be highly controversial and will be explored in greater detail later.)

In order to minimise the likelihood of CAGs becoming a site of conflict within a

community, CAGs were not incorporated and did not directly hold monies. In

addition they did not provide services or programmes and did not directly seek

funding. A number of CAGs discussed the possibility of developing formal

relationships with their local Shire governments and other service delivery agencies

(Department of Indigenous Affairs 2004: 15). This formalisation of linkages may

have positively impacted on the way in which issues of concern to Indigenous

communities were taken up into Shire plans. Indeed, there was the possibility for a

while that CAGs could be recognized as Advisory Committees under the Local

Government Act (1995) which would then require local governments to provide

administrative support to the CAGs (Department of Indigenous Affairs 2004: 16). If

this had occurred, such a development could have helped overcome some of the

capacity issues which bedevil indigenous community organisations. However, the

relatively informal nature of CAGs was one of the key reasons behind their successes

as it is meant they avoided becoming a site of contestation for power. Conversely a

lack of strong linkages to formal power structures may have worked to limit their

effectiveness and ability to survive a change in government policy or government

funding priorities and structures.

The Western Australian Department of Indigenous Affairs (DIA) was a strong

supporter of the CAG-system – arguing in a report that CAGs were “becoming the

cornerstone to effective coordination of services to the Noongar community by Local,

State and Commonwealth Governments” (Department of Indigenous Affairs 2004: 3).

In fact, one could easily argue that the CAG concepts success was largely due to

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DIA’s efforts to champion the concept. The initial CAG pilots were supported by

funding from DIA, the relevant ATSIC regional councils and the then Department of

Family and Community Services (FACS). Subsequently CAGs received support from

DIA both in the establishment period, in the running of community meetings and the

like, and in the ongoing meeting processes.

In its official publications the DIA appeared cognisant of the fact that, in terms of the

related issues of ownership and long term sustainability, CAGs needed to be seen by

Aboriginal communities as belonging to those communities and not to outside groups

like government. Indeed, DIA argued that “although government can assist in

establishing these CAGs, it is important that the Noongar community does not see

them as a creation of government” (Department of Indigenous Affairs 2004: 3).

However, while CAGs were described by the DIA as being “a local Noongar initiative

based on traditional family structures” (Department of Indigenous Affairs 2004: 3) it

was always questionable as to how sustainable they were as an organisational form

without the continuing financial and administrative support of government

departments such as DIA. Indeed, it was always worrying that while DIA had been

strong on rhetoric in terms of the ownership of the CAG concept by local Aboriginal

communities, it never provided a clear exit strategy for their involvement in creating

and maintaining CAGs in the region.

Another issue of concern was that CAGs were only ever established in small regional

towns and centres. No CAGs were ever created in the Perth Metropolitan area which

is where the majority of the Southwest’s Aboriginal population (both Noongar and

non-Noongar) reside. The transient nature of the Aboriginal urban population

combined with the sheer size of the Aboriginal population in an urban centre such as

Perth meant that, as an organisational structure, these types of areas were not

conducive to the formation of CAGs. The large Aboriginal population in urban

centres, even in smaller centres such as Albany and Bunbury, means that the family

representative structure upon which CAGs are constructed may not ever have been

able to function effectively. Indeed, Smythe went so far as to argue that the CAG

model seemed to be suited only to small rural towns where the Indigenous population

is discrete and stable (2005: 53).

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While CAGs played a useful role in alleviating family feuding and in achieving

social, economic and cultural outcomes2 they were always challenged as a governance

structure. They were bedevilled by problems such the inability to be launched in large

urban areas. The greatest issue, however, was always their inability to make any

distinction between traditional owners and historic peoples. This is a distinction that is

crucial if CAGs were to be drawn into any discussion about country, something which

was a distinct possibility if CAGs were seen by Shire authorities as being the

representative body for Indigenous communities in the Southwest.

CAGs do appear to have been successful in accomplishing what it was they were

designed to do – to provide a mechanism for information to flow between local

Aboriginal communities and stakeholders such as local governments and other service

provision agencies. However, CAGs value as an indigenous organisational structure,

and as a possible model for an indigenous regional governance structure in the

Southwest, was limited. The main reason for this is that while the issue of service

delivery was important to the region’s Indigenous peoples, there was no cultural

legitimacy behind the bringing together of these groups. So too, as a creation of

government, they were entirely dependent on the monies that government provided to

maintain their existence. When these monies stopped, as they did in 2006, CAGs fell

apart because as they possessed no cultural legitimacy to maintain their existence

beyond the input of government.

Noongar Partnership Alliance – a Noongar Nation?

The second structure I want to discuss was called the ‘Noongar Nation’ by its

proponents. The idea of a Noongar Nation is not new but it is only recently that any

real movement occurred in terms of making it become a reality. The genesis of the

concept can be traced back to the early 1970s when educated Noongar youth began to

liken themselves and their predicament to that faced by North American Indigenous

groups such as the Navaho nation. Its most recent emergence can be traced to 2000,

when a number of prominent Noongar leaders came together to form the Coalition of

2 Tarwangin – a newletter produced by the Department of Indigenous Affairs http://www.dia.wa.gov.au/newsletter/archive/newsletter_227.html, accessed on 10 October 2005.

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Aboriginal Agencies (CAA).3 The CAA was constructed on a model first utilised by

the Midland Aboriginal Advisory Group (MAAG) which emerged in 1997/98 when a

number of people working in service delivery agencies for the Aboriginal community

in the Midlands area of Metropolitan Perth came together to try and provide some

coordination in the delivery of services to that community.

The catalyst for the creation of this group had been the realisation by various people

working in the Aboriginal service delivery area in Midlands that the thirteen agencies

working in the region often did not know what the other agencies were doing – a

situation which was leading to much unnecessary overlap of service provision. The

success of MAAG led a number of prominent Noongar leaders to create the Perth

Aboriginal Reference Group (PARG) in an attempt to replicate the success of MAAG

in other parts of Perth.

Building on this success, PARG managed in 2000 to obtain funding from the Western

Australian Government to form the Indigenous Families Programme (IFP). In the

same year, many of the individuals behind the creation of PARG met in Clontarf in

2000 for a workshop where the idea of a Noongar Nation was mooted. These ideas

came together in the creation that year of the CAA.4 The underlying idea of the CAA

was that Aboriginal control and development of services for Aboriginals would lead

to better outcomes for Aboriginal people (Coalition of Aboriginal Agencies 2000: 2).

By coming together under a single umbrella it was hoped that a more coordinated

approach could be taken in terms of service delivery for Aboriginal families in the

Perth metropolitan area.

While the CAA and IFP had a degree of success over the next few years, the concept

of the Noongar Nation itself did not really progress beyond rhetoric. One possible

reason for this may have been the existence of the various ATSIC regional councils –

an organisational structure that fulfilled a similar niche. However, the

disestablishment of ATSIC created a catalytic moment which saw the concept of a

3 Unlike CAGs the CAA emerged directly from the Perth Metropolitan area. The CAA was a coalition of the six major Aboriginal Perth metropolitan agencies: Derbal Yerrigan Health Service, Yorganop Aboriginal Child Placement Service, Mangri, Noongar Alcohol and Substance Abuse Service, Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia and the Aboriginal Advancement Council of Western Australia. 4 The government funded IFP functioned as a form of secretariat for the CAA.

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Noongar Nation come to the fore. And so, in the wake of the 2004 announcement of

the upcoming disestablishment of ATSIC, the Perth Noongar Regional Council and

the Noongar Country Regional Council convened a meeting in Mandurah, just outside

Perth, on 20-22 December 2004. There they discussed the possible creation of a

regional governance structure for the Southwest. The proposal for a regional

framework which emerged from these initial and later discussions was based on the

idea of a Noongar Partnership Alliance (NPA) which would act as the foundation for

emergence of a regional structure in the Southwest based on the signing of a Shared

Responsibility Agreements (SRA).

Building on the foundation laid by the CAA, the NPA concept brought together

former ATSIC regional Chairs and Commissioner with the founders of CAA in the

signing of the Doorndjil Yoordaniny (Coming Together) Declaration in May 2005.

While the Doorndjil Yoordaniny Declaration provided a pivotal point upon which the

revitalised concept of the Noongar Nation has turned, the Declaration itself was based

upon broader Western Australian Aboriginal issues and not just those of the

Southwest.

The NPA concept was thus explicitly constructed as a response to the moves by the

then coalition government towards the creation of regional governance structures for

Indigneous Australians. The key focus of the NPA was to “provide a strong

connection between representatives elected by communities as a whole and service

providers” (Perth Noongar Regional Council and Noongar Regional Council 2005: 3).

As an example of the way in which these various structures overlapped in the same

governance space the NPA saws CAGs as playing a vital role in its representative

structure. (Indeed some of the same people were involved both the NPA and CAGs.)

At a regional level those behind the establishment of the idea of the NPA argued that

the proposed structure would:

negotiate with government on service delivery issues in the region;

establish strategic directions for the delivery of services by

Departments;

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work with the ICC to find out what Departments want to do and what

their budgets are;

participate in determining public investment in the region through a

regional budget based on the expenditures of all government

Departments;

determine regional priorities; and

look at ways of pooling funding which cut across Departmental

Programme boundaries and consider local mutual obligation initiatives

(Perth Noongar Regional Council and Noongar Regional Council

2005: 14).

The CAGs in turn would:

provide a forum at the local level for negotiating with government

agencies and organisations about what services are to be provided and

how they are to be delivered;

represent the interests of the community, families and individuals; and

work with the ICC to negotiate shared responsibility agreements with

the community, families and individuals and consider mutual

obligation initiatives (Perth Noongar Regional Council and Noongar

Regional Council 2005: 14).

In the first six months of 2005 over 36 community meetings were held across the

Southwest promoting the concept of the NPA as the regional governance structure for

the Southwest. Building on existing structures the NPA was promoted as a regional

authority into which CAGs could link, with CAGs providing a “forum at the local

level for negotiating with government agencies and organisations what [sic] services

are to be provided and how they are to be delivered” as well as electing

representatives to the Noongar Partnership Alliance (Perth Noongar Regional Council

and Noongar Regional Council 2005: 3).

However, despite a relatively high level of support amongst aspects of the Noongar

leadership and good connections across a range of stakeholders including

government, private sector and the community, the NPA was never able to become

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more than an idea. The key issue which prevented the NPA coming together was a

lack of finances. Despite government interest in the idea, they were not willing to

fund it. And, without government funding there was no way that the promoters of the

NPA could acquire adequate funding to make their dream a reality. So, while having a

relatively large degree of cultural legitimacy in representing Noongar interests –

many of the the group leaders were also prominent leaders in the Noongar community

– the lack of government support, as a financial supporter of last resort, meant that

thethe NPA faded into obscurity.

South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council

The South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC) is the current Native

Title Representative Body (NTRB) for the Southwest of Western Australia.5

Operating as an NTRB, only the descendants of traditional landowners in the

Southwest, that is Noongar, are entitled to belong to SWALSC. The SWALSC was

created by the Noongar Land Council (NLC) executive in an attempt to overcome the

deadlock amongst Noongar that threatened to derail the re-registration of the

Southwest NTRB. The NLC was the previous NTRB for the Southwest and for a

period in 2002,the Noongar Land Council and SWALSC shared not only their

executive but also their entire staff.6

SWALSC is made up of an executive and an elected arm. The executive arm operates

under a CEO who controls the day-to-day running of the organisation while the

elected arm operates through a council system. Under the SWALSC, Noongar country

is split into 14 wards. These fourteen wards were created in alignment with various

shire boundaries within the Southwest region. Each ward elects four members to the

SWALSC full council. These four members are in turn elected to fill certain positions

within their ward, these being: an executive committee member, a ward

representative, a women’s representative and an older person. While all four sit on

5 SWALSC, as the regional native title representative body, operates under the Commonwealth Native Title Act of 1993 as amended in 1998. 6 The Noongar Land Council has never been wound up and a number of Noongar individuals continue to assert that they are the office holders of the NLC and that it is still the legitimate NTRB for the Southwest. However,the NLC has no legitimacy in the eyes of the Australian government.

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full council they are also meant to sit on their respective sub-committees.7 At this

time the ward system does not map onto the six working groups which constitute the

decision making body of the native title claimants, although there have been recent

moves to try and bring these different aspects of SWALSC into alignment.

As SWALSC is the NTRB for the Southwest, its primary mandate is the negotiation,

and eventual settlement, of native title in the region. In the wake of the passage of the

Native Title Act (1993), 78 individual claims had been laid by Noongar over various

sections of the Southwest. Despite the number of these claims it should be noted that

there had long been a desire amongst Noongar for the creation of a Single Noongar

Claim (SNC).8 This desire, when coupled with the NLCs lack of capacity to fully

support all 78 existing claims, meant that from 1998 the NLC began a process of

consolidation of the various claims. While the general wish was for the consolidation

process to lead to a single claim, it was decided by the NLC executive that the move

from 78 claims to a single claim would, for pragmatic reasons, be too risky due to the

possibility that it could fail registration. For this reason, an intermediate step was

chosen whereby the 78 claims would be reduced to six, and from there the six

remaining claims would be consolidated into one single claim. With this long-term

goal in mind the 78 original claims were withdrawn in 1998 and replaced by six larger

claims covering the same total area (Noongar Land Council Annual Report

1998/1999: 3).

In withdrawing their claims, the named applicants of the original claims were

transferred over to the new six claims. The six claims are the Yued, Ballardong,

Gnaala Karla Booja, Combined Metro Claim, South West Boojarah and Wagyl Kaip.

These are also the regions upon which the six working groups are constructed. (The

Ballardong claim is currently unregistered.) In addition to becoming the named

applicants of the six new claims, these individuals also became the initial members of

7 These committees also included a youth leadership sub-committee, an economic development sub-committee, a language and culture advisory sub-committee and a finance and audit sub-committee. 8 A number of Noongar individuals have told me that the reason that there was a general consensus in the period of consultation among Noongar for the move towards a single claim, and in fact the original desire for a single claim by many in the mid-1990s, was the belief by many that Noongar constituted a single group – a Noongar Nation.

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the working parties for each of the claims. These working parties were to be the key

point of communication and deliberation between SWASLC and the respective native

title claimants.

This process raised a number of issues about the governance and legitimacy of these

new working parties. A number of Noongar families who had interests in various of

the six new claims felt that their interests were not being either protected or served by

the working parties as they were constituted. With membership of the working parties

restricted to those who had been named applicants of the initial 78 claims, or those

individuals granted membership of the working parties by the aforementioned named

applicants, a number of Noongar individuals and families felt that the native title

process was being hijacked by certain other Noongar families and individuals who

had managed to ‘get in first’.

In addition, as working party meetings began to be held, Noongar individuals would

attend and be voted on to the working party by current working party members. This

process meant that working parties began to rapidly grow in size. This had a number

of important ramifications, the most important being the negative effect it had on the

achievement of quorums at any meeting as attendance by working party members was

often sporadic. Some people were also concerned that meetings were being ‘stacked’

by certain individuals and families to ensure advantageous results for either their

families or for themselves. The general feeling among many Noongar was that the

working parties were not representative of all Noongar interests, and these feelings

were relayed by various means back to SWALSC.

In February 2003 SWALSC held a number of claimant meetings across the entire

Southwest where they asked whether or not Noongar wanted to proceed with the

creation of a single claim. Given the then current status of native title in Australia,

especially in the wake of the Ward and Yorta Yorta decisions, and the degree of

native title extinguishment in the South West, a single native title claim was seen as

providing a much stronger position to argue from. However, while SWALSC would

move towards a single claim it was decided that they would retain the existing

structure of the six working parties. Nonetheless, concerned with the negative

feedback they had been receiving about the current working party system, the

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SWALSC presented an alternative working party structure to Noongar at these

meetings. Both resolutions, that SWALSC move towards the creation of a single

Noongar claim and that the working party system be restructured, were carried at all

of the claimant meetings.

After this initial round of meetings SWALSC researchers, as part of a process to

rework the working party system, began to compile lists of genealogies and family

names associated with various regions across the South West linked back to lists of

apical ancestors.9 Once these lists were compiled a meeting would be called in the

respective regions, and the lists of family names would be posted. The Noongar

present at the meeting would add or subtract names until agreement was reached in

the room that only families who had traditional interests in the region and could speak

for country were left on the list. From late May until December 2003, the researchers

then called meetings with each of the Noongar families to confirm family genealogies

and family connections to country, although research capacity issues prevented this

being achieved for all families.

In addition, at these meetings each family nominated two members who would

become the family representatives on the new regional working parties. The methods

for selection by each family of their representatives were left to the families. Some

families chose to have a show of hands, others voted, while still others decided to

have private discussions without the researchers present before informing the

SWALSC of their decision. Research officers were required to ensure that each

family adopted a decision making structure, whatever that may be, and then to record

how this structure operated. During these meetings and the ensuing decision making

process, much weight was given to the opinion of the elders of each family. In the

smaller families, the decision-making was generally structured around the oldest male

while larger families tended to structure proceedings around the oldest surviving

sibling set (including cousins).

Elsewhere I have argued that the working parties that emerged from this process are

seen by many Noongar as being the most appropriate decision making bodies for

Noongar because the regional working groups comprised over 240 endorsed family

9 Some overlap between not only families, but apical ancestors as well, occurred across regions.

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representatives with each Noongar family represented in the areas in which they held

land interests (Barcham 2008). Noongar have argued that the new working party

structure is more representative of Noongar society and has helped stop old power

plays between the families (Barcham 2008: 279). In one respect, then, the working

groups can be seen as the sites where Noongar social structures connect with the

NTRB. In doing this they provide a socially and culturally appropriate vehicle for

Noongar structures to interact with the structures of the Australian state.

The Single Noongar claim was not brought to court because in 2005 the Western

Australian Office of the State Solicitor and the Federal Government began to press for

one of the six underlying claims, the Combined Metro claim, to go to trial. Despite

opposition by the SWALSC, the case nonetheless went to court in October 2005. The

decision on this claim came down on 19 September 2006 (Bennell v Western

Australia [2006] FCA 1243). Ruling that Noongar did indeed possess native title in

the Perth metropolitan area, the judgment effectively ruled for the existence of the

Single Noongar claim as the metropolitan claim was seen as being the most difficult

to prove. Appealed by both the State and Federal governments, the appeal was upheld

by the Full Bench of the Federal Court on 23 April 2008. The decision was set aside

and referred to a new hearing. This new hearing has not yet been brought to trial.

The SWALSC continues its native title work as an NRTB. This brings funds to the

organisation, but the organisation has a number of additional real strengths – the

strongest of which is probably the high degree of legitimacy and support it has

managed to garner amongst Noongar society in the last five years. With over 2,000

registered members SWALSC has the largest membership base of any Noongar

organisation. Its innovative use of Working Party groups combined with a broader

ward structure for its other representative functions lends it a high degree of

legitimacy as an Aboriginal, and specifically Noongar, governance structure in the

Southwest.

Governance Structures: Sustainability and Legitimacy in the Southwest

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Of the three organisations which were variously put forward by their proponents as a

possible regional governance structure for Indigenous peoples in the Southwest of

Western Australia only the SWALSC remains. I now want to draw out what I take to

be the two key factors accounting for the situation. These relate to questions of

financial support and cultural legitimacy.

In the mid-2000s the Federal government was quite adamant that regional governance

structures, if created, would receive no specific government funding except when they

were brought together with Departments for the purposes of consultation. Given this

issue, one of the key factors behind the ability of these structures to survive was their

ability to raise capital. As the earlier sections of this chapter have made clear, when

funding was withdrawn from the CAGs and when no funding was made available to

the NPA, both organisational structures collapsed. The SWALSC continues to receive

government funding as an NTRB, but this reliance on government funds raises the

question about what other sources of funding might be available to Aboriginal people

for the development of governance systems?

One possible source of funding for a regional governance organisation – funding

which may have helped the CAGs and the NPA to survive – relates to service

provision. This opportunity has been created by the shift to ‘contracting out’ service

delivery in recent decades. However, it is unrealistic to imagine that a regional

governance structure would be able to emerge fully formed – let alone with the

capacity to win service delivery contracts in order to provide an ongoing source of

income – without the necessary funding being put in place to create the required

structures and processes within the organisation. Without the initial funding from

government even this approach to raising operating capital would probably have

failed.

A second source of funding may arise through service agreements and engagement

with private industry, and the SWALSC are currently exploring some of these

options. However, without rights to land and related resources – something available

to only a relatively small proportion of Aboriginal people in Australian – there are

very limited other funding sources available to Aboriginal people. We can say, then,

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that it seems that some measure of government support is necessary for the initial

development of Indigenous governance structures in Australia.

Beyond the challenge of funding, regional governance organisations need to grapple

with the issue of cultural legitimacy. The extent to which the organisations resonate

with the populations they are created to represent is crucial. Even in the Southwest,

where various factors have meant that Noongar share relatively common cultural

characteristics, the presence of large numbers of non-Noongar Aboriginal peoples

complicates matters when it comes to discussions about regional governance

models.10 The SWALSC’s focuson its membership base as family groupings within

geographically defined working groups has given it a relatively high degree of

cultural legitimacy within the broader Noongar population. However, this base is, for

the moment, restricted to traditional owners in the Southwest (Noongar). This poses a

problem if SWALSC wished to become the overall Indigenous regional governance

structure, as in all likelihood a regional governance structure would have to deal with

service delivery issues – something that concerns all indigenous peoples in the

Southwest, not just Noongar.

So too, while the NPA was primarily discussed in terms of it being a Noongar

structure, the discussion around including CAGs within its broader administrative

structure demonstrated how it planned to include non-Noongar within its remit. CAG

membership base was composed of both Noongar and non-Noongar groups (and even

some of the Noongar groups included in some CAGs were not traditional owners but

rather more recent migrants to particular towns). This was not problematic initially

given CAGs primary focus on service delivery issues. However, if CAGs had been

drawn into debates about country (which was a very real possibility even if they did

not become the basis of a regional governance structure) then this particular

membership base may have caused problems because non-traditional owners are

generally not permitted to speak for country.

Indeed, the challenges around speaking for country confronted the SWALSC when

they sought to consolidate the six claims into a single claim. Robin Yarran, a current

10 Another issue, not discussed here, is the role of Noongar living off their traditional country in the management of their traditional country.

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native title claimant over Noongar country, is against the single Noongar claim

because he believes that “it is not possible [to create a single claim], because there are

different tribal groups of Noongars and we have tribal boundaries… that we refer to

as our Country, and we wish to retain our individual rights to speak for our own part

of Noongar country as Traditional Owners” (taken from the Yarran’s objection to the

Balladong claim – WAG 6181/98, lodged on 4 May 2004, Between Cedric Anderson,

Donald Collard, Sylvia Rachel Collard & Ors on Behalf of the Balladong People and

the State of Western Australia).

Perhaps the key reason that the SWALSC survived while the CAGs and NPA did not

is that it possessed both government funding and cultural legitimacy. While CAGs

possessed government funding, and so were able to survive while they maintained

that funding, once that funding stopped they faded from existence without any

cultural legitimacy to fall back. So too, while NPA had a relatively high degree of

cultural legitimacy among Noongar, without government funding they were unable to

bring their dream of creating an over-arching indigenous governance structure to

reality.

Within the contemporary Australian political landscape, cultural legitimacy alone is

not enough – at least in the Southwest of Western Australia – to ensure that

Indigenous organisational structures emerge and flourish. Funding is required to

ensure that these types of organisations can continue to operate and this means that

these forms of Indigenous organisational structures are heavily dependent on

government as the only real funding source for these groups at the present time. .

While this may change in the future –(for example if mining interests wish to engage

with Indigenous groups in the Southwest this may provide an initial source of revenue

which could then be parlayed into more sustainable revenue streams through

investment activity on the part of these indigenous organisations), at this point in time

Indigenous organisations in the Southwest (beyond a minimum size) are still heavily

dependent in government for their ongoing existence.

Conclusion

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This chapter does not make claims about other parts of Australia, nor can it claim to

have accounted for all the factors that may have played a role in the continued

existence or not of CAGs, the NPA and SWALSC in the Southwest of Western

Australia. However, it does nonetheless provide useful indications about the

conditions for emergence of sustainable and legitimate Indigenous governance

structures within Australia.

Analysis of Community Action Groups (CAGs), the Noongar Partnership Alliance

(NPA) and the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (SWALSC), shows that

cultural legitimacy and government funding appear to be key constraining or enabling

factors in the creation and sustainability of Indigenous governance structures in

Australia. This realisation does not provide us with an immediate way forward in

terms of the creation of robust Indigenous governance structures, but it does indicate

that, at the moment, Indigenous governance structures are still, in the Southwest of

Western Australia at least, heavily dependent on government support for their

operations. This may not necessarily be a bad thing so long as it is faced openly and

there is an eye to longer term sustainability. This is crucial because, as former

Federal Liberal Senator and current member of the National Native Title Tribunal

Fred Chaney has argued, efforts toward reconciliation, overcoming disadvantage and

a range of other policy goals in Indigenous affairs and Indigenous-Settler relations

develop effective indigenous governance structures] “will fail if competent, legitimate

indigenous governance structures are not equipped to fulfil their end of the deal.”

(Chaney 2004: 63)

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