Contested Governance looks to this intercultural arena to put forward ethnographic accounts of the ‘cultures of governance’ of both Indigenous peoples and the Australian state, and explores their institutional inter-relationship. The book seeks to unite empirical, theoretical and action research by using these accounts to critique the concept and meanings of governance, and to pose questions about the nature and future of Indigenous governance in ‘post-colonial’ Australia.

From a scholarly perspective, the contributors seek to understand and problematise how Indigenous governance operates—in all its diversity—at the local level: its cultural foundations, values and principles, what is working, what is not, and why. The chapters collectively aim to better elucidate the relationship between the effectiveness of governing arrangements in diverse contexts, and factors of institutional form, scale, power, autonomy, legitimacy, representation and accountability. A key aim is to instil comparative data, greater analytical rigour and theoretical content into debates on these issues.

From policy and practical perspectives we believe that high quality research can have significant value to both Indigenous groups and governments concerned with enabling community ‘governance building’. For the communities involved, the field research has been applied and collaborative—it has aimed to make research ‘count’ on the ground (see Holcombe this volume, Chapter 3). All the authors have worked on practical initiatives with Indigenous communities, organisations and leaders to identify the shortfalls and assets in governance power, institutions and capabilities, and to highlight successful governance strategies and solutions for wider dissemination. To that extent, the authors seek to make an empirical, conceptual and practical contribution to the governance field in Indigenous affairs in Australia and more widely.

Authors of the various chapters explore fundamental questions about the histories, nature and exercise of Indigenous governance, and its place in Indigenous communities and the wider Australian state. These issues have taken on an added urgency since the unilateral intervention by the previous Australian Government into NT communities (see Altman, Hunt, Smith, Ivory, this volume), and the current Federal Labor Government’s formal apology to the Stolen Generations following the opening of the Australian Parliament in early 2008, referred to at the beginning of this introduction.^[1] These two events, though diametrically different in character and intention, have focused attention squarely back onto issues of Indigenous legal rights, socioeconomic status and self-determination and, by implication, onto Indigenous self-governance.