The two stories that opened this chapter stand as a testimony to the Indigenous struggle for the recognition and rights of their governance in Australia. The following chapters highlight the dilemmas and challenges involved in this, the nature of the contestation and negotiation between Australian governments, their agents and Indigenous groups over the appropriateness of different governance processes, values and practices, and over the application of related policy, institutional and funding frameworks within Indigenous affairs.

Collectively, the papers in this volume demonstrate that the facilitation of effective, legitimate governance should be a policy, funding and institutional imperative for all Australian governments—yet by and large it is not. There are examples of Indigenous groups successfully designing innovative governance arrangements, transforming their institutions, building new capacities and revitalising trusted processes. However, the contributions to this volume overwhelmingly point to the continuing challenges that Indigenous people face in their efforts to secure and exercise genuine decision-making authority and capacity over issues that matter to them, and therefore, to the related challenges facing the Australian state and its agents.

Today Indigenous systems of governance remain squarely located within an intercultural, post-colonial frame in which the Australian state has overarching sovereign power and jurisdiction, as they were 80 years ago when Jimmy Clements attempted to assert his sovereign rights at the opening of Australia’s first parliament. Research for this book occurred during a period which has seen major interventions by governments in Indigenous affairs at national, State and Territory levels. In combination, the chapters also document the significant and ongoing negative impacts that the poor ‘governance of governments’ is having on the operation of Indigenous governance, and on people’s daily experience of living and working in their communities and organisations.

Importantly, the chapters point to the need to rectify the common assumption that Indigenous cultures across the country are so completely different that general principles of Indigenous governance cannot be discerned. Whilst there is enormous variety of circumstance, the ICGP and the detailed accounts presented here do identify some common Indigenous ‘design principles’, which underpin governance across the diverse settings (Hunt and Smith 2007). Greater attention to these principles may be a fundamental factor in strengthening Indigenous governance.

Common Indigenous principles of governance include the relevance and legitimacy of:

In activating these principles, the institutional and organisational dimensions of Indigenous governance are both important. Institutions are often longer-lasting and more influential on people’s behaviour than organisations. They are especially influential in determining the extent to which governance arrangements are judged to be proper and legitimate. To that extent, the chapters collectively remind us that institutional strength is not only fundamental to achieving effective Indigenous governance, but that it must be created from the considered and informed choice of Indigenous people themselves, not through external imposition.

To outsiders, Indigenous organisations and their leaders are often the most visible expression of governance in communities. But ‘community governance’ for Indigenous people is in fact a form of multi-networked, nodal governance that includes not only organisations, but also wider networks of leaders, families and communities. These nodal networks are embedded within the more formal wider governance environment that includes governments, bureaucratic and policy networks, private sector companies, voluntary organisations, and their individual officers.

The case study research presented here demonstrates that Indigenous and non-Indigenous governance systems are intercultural in respect to issues of power, authority, institutions and relationships. It also documents the intended and unintended consequences—beneficial and negative—arising for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians from the realities of contested governance. In particular, the contemporary governance arrangements of Indigenous communities, their organisations and leaders have been significantly affected by their interactions with the Australian state over many decades. To a lesser extent, and at specific points, the state has in turn been influenced by its interactions with Indigenous Australians’ systems of governance. That influence is most apparent at the level of the state’s institutional engagement and policy implementation in Indigenous affairs. It is likely, therefore, that the legitimacy and effectiveness of both Indigenous governance and the ‘governance of governments’ in Australia will continue to be inextricably linked, not only to the priorities, normative codes and institutional predilections of each, but to the extent of their mutual understanding and engagement.