Culturally Appropriate Indigenous Accountability

Abstract

Since they renounced the policy goal of assimilation in the 1970s, Australian governments have encouraged indigenous Australians to form corporations. Such bodies receive public money to deliver services, and they have become the sinews of a mobilized indigenous constituency. By reviewing the research and recommendations of a recent Australian government report, this article addresses the controversy about the indigenous corporation's multiple accountability: to the taxpayer, their employees, and their clients. In addition, drawing on recent international theoretical debates about the rationales of liberal tolerance for cultural minorities, this article qualifies the widely held assumption that accountability in this instance must be culturally appropriate.