Losing ground? Issues of autonomy in an Urban Indigenous Organisation.

Abstract

This thesis offers an ethnographic study of one urban Aboriginal organisation, Winanga-Li Aboriginal Corporation; a successful human service agency struggling against the socioeconomic disadvantage faced by Aboriginal Australians. The thesis argues that the difficulties faced by Winanga-Li stem not from Indigenous incapacity, but rather from government policies that maintain Indigenous oppression. Three interwoven theoretical strands serve to explicate this thesis: those of post-colonialism, identity politics, and neoliberalism within contemporary government bureaucracies. Essential to this theoretical framework is the exploration of power relationships between Indigenous Australians and the State. These power relationships not only bear upon Indigenous interactions with other Australians and each other, but also upon both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples' constructions of Indigenous culture, tradition and behaviour. Australian governments have a poor track record of interacting and consulting with urban Indigenous collectives. This, coupled with the centralised top-down design and development of Indigenous-specific human services, results in the programs intended to ameliorate Indigenous disadvantage producing negligible outcomes. Further frustrating efforts to improve the socioeconomic outcomes of Indigenous Australians is governments' preferred approach for funding a small number of large non-Indigenous organisations to provide Indigenous-specific human services. Although such organisations have little experience with the Indigenous clients they intend to serve - or credibility in their eyes - these organisations are increasingly being awarded Indigenous service funding through neoliberal tendering processes, since their structure and ideology aligns with those of the State. As a result, Indigenous-controlled organisations are being coerced into adopting an economic imperialist outlook or risk being defunded; thus losing the organic governance culture that has uniquely been producing results in reducing Indigenous disadvantage. While Australian governments openly acknowledge the egregious disadvantage Indigenous Australians face when compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts, and attempt to decrease it largely through the delivery of Indigenous-specific human services, their policies have failed and are continuing to fail. Evidence demands a new approach to the funding and design of Indigenous-specific human services if positive outcomes are to be achieved, and this thesis puts forth plausible recommendations for more effective Indigenous human service delivery. Show more