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.

1
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

2
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).

3
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

4
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).

5
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.

6
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.

7
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;

8
 • 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

9
government, private sector and the community, the NPA was never able to become
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

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.

10
representative, a women’s representative and an older person. While all four sit on
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
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.

11
applicants of the six new claims, these individuals also became the initial members of
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

12
feedback they had been receiving about the current working party system, the
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
9
Some overlap between not only families, but apical ancestors as well, occurred across regions.

13
Noongar because the regional working groups comprised over 240 endorsed family
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

14
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,

15
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.

16
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

17
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)

18
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