The field of governance in central Cape York Peninsula involves three sets of contested relationships that are constitutive of this field and its inherent complexities. Firstly, this field involves the articulation of homelands-based, ‘sub-regional’ and ‘regional’ Aboriginal organisations, in addition to the role played by State and Federal government agencies. Secondly, the region’s field of governance involves both putative and enacted relationships between contemporary forms of traditional Aboriginal law and custom, and ‘intercultural’ and ‘mainstream’ governance processes. Lastly, the region’s field of governance is marked by various forms of conjoint Aboriginal identity, articulated at different social scales.

The relationship of homelands-based, ‘sub-regional’ and ‘regional’ Aboriginal organisations with one another, as well as their engagements with State and Federal government agencies, represents the first set of contested relationships constitutive of this field. The past two decades have seen the establishment of a range of such organisations, including a series of Aboriginal corporations in Coen and Mangkuma at Lockhart River, Cairns-based ‘regional’ organisations such as the Cape York Land Council and several homelands-based corporations like CAC. This proliferation of formally incorporated bodies recalls Sanders’ (2004) suggestion that, rather than marking a ‘failure’ of Indigenous governance, the development of a complex and contested series of incorporated organisations meets particular socio-cultural and political requirements. The development of such representative structures may well mark a successful indigenisation of governance rather than a failure in the development of governance arrangements.

This recalls Gluckman’s (1968: 223) suggestion, as mentioned above, that institutions and wider social fields have a tendency to endure, such that ‘a field of institutional systems … will tend to develop, and even hypertrophy, along the main facets of its organisation, until conditions make it quite impossible for the system to continue to work’. As Sanders suggests, a hypertrophic tendency—a tendency to enlarge and increase in complexity—is widespread in Indigenous community governance. The establishment of a range of organisations at different scales should not be regarded as accidental, but rather as an expression of the different ways in which both Aboriginal and non-Indigenous agents seek to enact governance.

Further, the fact that focal men and women like D_ dispute the operation of Indigenous governance at certain scales, whilst remaining involved with organisations operating at those scales, should not be taken simply as capitulation to pre-established conditions. Rather, the organisational structures, institutions and procedures of the central Peninsula’s field of governance are themselves often partly driven by Indigenous relationships and systems (Hunt and Smith 2006a). This is one aspect of the increasing interweaving of formal and informal aspects of the regional field of governance. The resulting ability of Aboriginal people like D_ to activate formalised relationships of governance across various scales demonstrates the continuing existence of styles of Aboriginal politics within the contemporary field of governance surrounding Kaanju homelands.

Thus, as well as the interaction of formal Aboriginal organisations, the region’s field of governance includes relationships between contemporary forms of traditional Aboriginal law and custom and formal structures and processes of governance. These relationships have been treated elsewhere in terms of ‘cultural match’ and ‘legitimacy’ (see e.g., Hunt and Smith 2006a).

Questions concerning ‘cultural match’ are important in relation to Kaanju homelands, not least because they are a focus of current disputes between various focal men and women and the organisations with which they are aligned. Here it is important to note the high degree of heterogeneity of the ‘preferred contemporary values, norms and conceptions of how authority should be organised and leadership exercised’ (Hunt and Smith 2006b: 2). This heterogeneity implies that it may not be possible to discover a single governance arrangement best suited or most appropriate to this region. Rather, outside observers—and those entering into partnerships with Kaanju people in homelands-based projects—would do better to understand Aboriginal assertions about ‘culture’, ‘law’ and ‘custom’ as aspects of the shifting articulations of identity that remain deeply interwoven with Aboriginal politics. Likewise, issues of scale of representation or styles of decision making are deeply interwoven with the shifting field of relationality, autonomy and encompassment that lies at the heart of Aboriginal political life. To presume that there is a fundamentally legitimate cultural form or social scale that can be the basis of appropriate governance is to privilege one moment within the dynamic processes that constitute the regional field of governance.

For this reason, formal institutions of governance are deeply interwoven with less formal aspects of governance—in particular, the relational politics of the Aboriginal domain. This interrelationship problematises the idea of ‘culture match’. In the central Peninsula, one cannot simply expect to ‘match’ an institution to an underlying social order. Rather, the various ‘institutions’ (whether formal or informal) that together constitute the field of governance are marked by ongoing processes of inter-relation and contestation. In generating a complex institutional field, local Aboriginal styles of governance have not been ‘matched’. Rather, Aboriginal organisations have been accommodated within an existing field of governance, resulting in a hypertrophic series of organisations that extends the informal complexities of Aboriginal politics.^[13]

The complexities of these local Aboriginal styles of governance include the articulation of various forms of Aboriginal identity at different social scales—particularly in relation to intra-Aboriginal politics. What Hunt and Smith (2006a: ix) call a ‘continuum of localised and regionalised scales of population and land ownership’ lies at the heart of the region’s complex field of Indigenous governance. Here, rather than the ‘groups’ on which most attempts at formal Indigenous governance are based, what is apparent is the constantly shifting presentation of various conjoint identities as the basis of political action. As in the contested history of ‘Southern Kaanju’ people’s involvement in the Birthday Mountain claim, ‘Northern Kaanju’ involvement in the governance of their homelands makes it clear that any attempt to identify a basic level or form of Aboriginal governance obscures the inherent indeterminacy of the identities through which Aboriginal social and political life is enacted. Indeed, any such attempt at formalisation of Aboriginal ‘groups’ is likely to result in a reactionary projection of interests at a smaller or larger scale, again revealing the dynamic of ‘autonomy and relatedness’ (Martin 1993; Myers 1986) that lies at the heart of Aboriginal sociality.^[14]

Issues of leadership and succession are similarly embedded in the negotiative, contested and fractious domain of Aboriginal political identities. Following the death of several of the region’s focal men and women, succession in relation to Kaanju homelands ‘business’ was marked by the emergence of an intercultural representative politics, and by a move away from an emphasis on negotiative interrelation with an ‘as of right’ model of representation being asserted by at least one local ‘leader’. But both of these phenomena were undercut by a continuing emphasis on a negotiative form of relational politics among Kaanju people. This negotiative character weakened the effectiveness of both CAC and Mangkuma, whilst those controlling these organisations avoided seeking widespread political support. L_’s recent resignation and D_’s concurrent move to engage a wider set of Aboriginal people in his projects suggest a realignment of both organisations towards the involvement of a wider range of ‘countrymen’. This move may prove vital to these organisations in continuing to garner support from ‘outside’ organisations, support that remains essential to successful homelands development.

Despite their earlier shift away from the negotiative style of Aboriginal politics, both CAC and Mangkuma were previously managed to generate homelands-based development projects. But these projects were hampered by continuing inter-organisational and inter-personal conflicts, and by growing questions amongst the employees of partnering governmental and non-governmental organisations concerning the legitimacy of their operations. Whilst both organisations could claim some successes in relation to particular development projects on homelands, it seemed likely until recently that internal tensions and external caution might eventually have hindered the sustainability of such development.

The manner in which the relational style of Aboriginal politics has undermined organisations like CAC and Mangkuma recalls Hunt and Smith’s (2006a) insistence that the governance environment can enable or disable. Certainly, it seems that where focal men and women exceed the support of their wider set of countrymen, the organisations for which they are responsible can face considerable difficulties. But I am not convinced that we can presume that such disabling effects are necessarily negative from local Aboriginal perspectives, even where they impede economic development. As anthropologists working with (former) hunter-gatherers have argued (see e.g., Woodburn 1982), these peoples—who commonly have a strongly acephalous political orientation—are often resistant to political formations that do not satisfy their interests, even where they will suffer material losses as a result. Although it is difficult to even consider such ideas within the current climate of Aboriginal affairs in Australia, it is vital to consider whether the disabling of governance arrangements may, on balance, be viewed as desirable by many Aboriginal people where these arrangements do not meet with their approval and support.