Indigenous Community Governance and Building Leadership Capacity

Literature Review

Table of Contents
Indigenous community governance.................................................................................................3
Building leadership capacity to govern the community..................................................................5

Indigenous community governance
Indigenous community can be understood as the network of different people and
organizations which are linked with each-other through webs, cultural identities, political
connections, personal relationships, shared histories, social and economic conditions and more.
In this regard, different types of communities are given below:
 Discrete geographic communities: Like remote settlements, towns, there are nearly
1300 located with rural, urban and remote locations in Australia. These residents can be
understood as mix of different families, groups, languages or people who come from
different cultural groups (McLaverty, 2017).
 Dispersed communities of identity: Sometimes, members if nations, tribes are likely to
spread across different locations within a region. However, they are likely to share
similar cultural identity hence, they are considered as a part of same community.
 A community of interest: In this, people are included who do not share similar cultural
identity but come together voluntarily as they have same goals, interest and more. It
shows that often there are various indigenous communities who live together at a same
place. However, they share similar characteristics in their extensive networks and also
valued their cultural identities significantly (Chapela, 2021).
The indigenous community governance program was run from 2005 to 2008 that was
supported under Australian research council’ linkage funding scheme. The same project also got
fund from Northern Territory and West Australian governments through different departments
like department of housing, families, and community services and so on. This project was based
on partnership between centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research and Reconciliation
Australia with an aim to undertake research about indigenous community governance along with
participating indigenous communities, leaders all across Australia and regional indigenous
organizations (Indigenous Community Governance-Project overview, 2010).
Australian government is encouraging the incorporation of indigenous community
organizations to conduct their own community affairs and also delivered government funded
services from the last thirty years as per a policy of self –determination. As a result, a indigenous
community - based organization in Australia has been efflorescence. It includes different
services like legal services, child-care services, health-services, sporting club and more. Due to