Organisational Capacity for Engaging with Indigenous Australians

Community capacity building is a common goal for programmes and policies involving Indigenous peoples, but it relies heavily on organisational capacity to work effectively in intercultural settings. This paper reviews the organisational capacity of the senior leaders of Australian Red Cross and institutional efforts to build a culturally appropriate and respectful organisation. It reports results from a survey of the organisation's leadership team and follow‐up interviews undertaken in 2010, reviews the challenges facing the organisation in working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, and considers institutional progress in building internal capacity to lead change in working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. The paper concludes with discussion of wider implications of this research.     

Social Impact Assessment as ‘Applied Peoples' Geography’

The increasing imposition of requirements for formal impact assessment reports prior to government approval of major industrial developments provides an opportunity for professional geographers to address the research-action agenda outlined by Harvey (1984) in his call for an applied peoples' geography. Using examples from impact studies involving indigenous peoples affected by Australian resource projects, this paper considers the conceptual basis for empowering, participatory and interventionist social impact research which addresses Harvey's concerns.     

Resource Development and Aborigines: The Case of Roebourne 1960–1980

The pervasive and dynamic influence of economic restructuring on political and social relations is highlighted in many aspects of Australian daily life. The effect of economic restructuring on already marginalised and disempowered groups in society is often overlooked Development of iron ore mines and associated new towns, railways and ports transformed the regional economy of Western Australia's Pilbara region in the 1960s and 1970s. For Aborigines in Roebourne, this restructuring represented a new phase in their relations with ‘White Australia’. Interacting historical legacies, corporate strategies, government policies and economic processes further marginalised the region's Aboriginal population and linked the region to the global economy in ways which created significant barriers to the development of Aboriginal self-management strategies. This paper reviews this period with particular emphasis on the social impact of the iron ore ‘boom’ on local Aboriginal people. In the current climate of renewed economic and political crisis in Western Australia, this review provides a timely reminder that such processes occur in a broader context than is often recognised in regional planning processes.     

Natural and Unnatural Disasters: Responding with Respect for Indigenous Rights and Knowledges

A key challenge for contemporary democratic societies is how to respond to disasters in ways that foster just and sustainable outcomes that build resilience, respect human rights, and foster economic, social, and cultural well‐being in reasonable timeframes and at reasonable costs. In many places experiencing rapid environmental change, indigenous people continue to exercise some level of self‐governance and autonomy, but they also face the burden of rapid social change and hostile or ambiguous policy settings. Drawing largely on experience in northern Australia, this paper argues that state policies can compound and contribute to vulnerability of indigenous groups to both natural and policy‐driven disasters in many places. State‐sponsored programmes that fail to respect indigenous rights and fail to acknowledge the relevance of indigenous knowledge to both social and environmental recovery entrench patterns of racialised disadvantage and marginalisation and set in train future vulnerabilities and disasters. The paper advocates an approach to risk assessment, preparation, and recovery that prioritises partnerships based on recognition, respect, and explicit commitment to justice. The alternatives are to continue prioritising short‐term expediencies and opportunistic pursuit of integration, or subverting indigenous rights and the knowledge systems that underpin them. This paper argues such alternatives are not only unethical, but also ineffective.     

Prospects for,and Challenges of,Research Design and Training in Cross‐Disciplinary Environmental Management Research

Research in coupled human and natural systems can be quite a cross‐disciplinary endeavour, requiring the combination of diverse concepts, methods, and approaches. While there is a wide recognition of the importance of incorporating different viewpoints, perspectives, and disciplines in achieving positive environmental and social outcomes, the methods through which such research is designed, specifically the processes engaged in, are largely absent from the literature. This presents challenges in research training for students in the field. This paper uses the example of a recent student project examining the management of Temperate Highland Peat Swamps on Sandstone to consider how research training might address project design, conceptual challenges, and methodological choices. The goal of this project was to build improved understanding of the role of context in the adaptive management of these endangered ecological communities from Commonwealth to micro‐local scales. The paper explores the complexities of integrating approaches and methods drawn from both social sciences and environmental sciences. Rather than providing a definitive ‘how to guide’ for conducting integrative cross‐disciplinary research, it offers food for thought on the processes involved in creating a research project which transcends boundaries between social science and environmental science that are easily entrenched in research training that is compartmentalised along discipline lines.     

(Re)asserting Indigenous Rights and Jurisdictions within a Politics of Place: Transformative Nature of Native Title Negotiations in South Australia

Australia's dominant politics of place has largely failed to give meaningful recognition to Indigenous peoples. The Native Title Act 1993 required governments, industry and others to (re)consider the basis and extent of their authority, unsettling the non‐Indigenous systems’ assumed dominance. While Indigenous hopes about Native title have diminished as a result of subsequent judicial, legislative and administrative responses, Native title negotiations have been pivotal in redefining politics of place and Indigenous–settler relationships in Australia at several scales. Focusing on South Australia's Statewide Indigenous Land Use Agreement Negotiation Strategy, this paper considers such a redefinition. The paper identifies four strategies as critical to success in transformative spatial politics: getting process right; recognising and supporting Indigenous jurisdictions; engaging and transforming non‐Indigenous scales; and shifting Native title process away from legalities, towards people and relationships. Since 1999, these strategies have transformed the politics of place and built more equitable inter‐cultural relationships and networks based on mutual recognition and respect between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous rights and interests in land and waters.