The concept of the ‘Indigenous community’ remains fuzzy and confusing. It continues to be associated with discrete geographical settlements, where it evokes ideas of a shared, idealised culture and a unity of purpose and action among its members (see Peters-Little 2000). In this way, ‘community’ and a homogeneity of culture and interests have come to be conflated in the public mind.

But this is not the case. A ‘community’ can be defined as a network of people and organisations that are linked together by webs of relationships, cultural identity, traditions, rules, shared histories, or simply common interests and goals (Hunt and Smith 2006, 2007). Indigenous communities are diverse in their cultures, historical experiences, governance histories and location. In Indigenous Australia, communities include not only discrete remote locations and rural settlements (of which there are over 1000; see Taylor 2006) but also ‘communities of identity’ whose members share a common cultural identity but are residentially dispersed across a region or set of locations. There are also Indigenous ‘communities of interest’ comprising different groups who unite for a common purpose, but may have different cultural identities and rights (see Hunt and Smith 2007: 4; Smith 2005: 24–5).

Today, approximately three-quarters of Indigenous Australians live in urban areas, with 30 per cent residing in major cities (Taylor 2006). While some are permanent residents of particular towns, many others are periodic urban dwellers who travel between towns and their hinterland rural communities, where they make use of a series of ‘usual residences’. The high population turnover associated with this pattern of movement between cities and rural communities ‘is such that Indigenous people in the city are not just similar to those in country areas—to a large extent they are the ‘same’ people spatially displaced at different stages of their lives’ (Taylor 2006: 3). In other words, reference to ‘urban Indigenous communities’ needs to be qualified in terms of their mobility, cultural heterogeneity and contemporary social complexity.

Many Indigenous Australians have built up strong historical attachments to particular urban residential ‘hubs’,^[1] which have become an integral part of their contemporary identities. The resident Indigenous ‘community’ in such locations is not homogenous. More often, it comprises a mixed constituency of large extended families and related individuals, who come and go. These families form social networks within their urban location that stretch outwards to connect to other family members and ‘communities’ in surrounding regions (see Macdonald 2000; Peters-Little 2000: 412; Smith 2000; Sutton 1998). As a consequence, there are usually many ‘communities’ within a community, and extended families invariably form the foundations for these.

The governance of these fluid and compositionally complex urban communities is extremely challenging. A contributing factor has been the tidal wave of organisational incorporation that has occurred over the past 30 years. Today, there are an estimated 5000 incorporated community and regional organisations across Australia, with an estimated (minimum) 30 000 governing board members at their helm.^[2] To some extent, this growth has been the result of a large number of government agencies taking an interest in Indigenous corporate affairs and socioeconomic outcomes. However, it has also been the product of Indigenous agency and choice, as small urban Indigenous groups, and more recently regional alliances of urban organisation and communities, have sought greater autonomy and control in the conduct of their community affairs, delivery of services, and business and enterprise development.

While there have been important practical, political and funding advantages to incorporation, some organisations have become silos of factional power in communities, competing with each other for members and local legitimacy, as well as scarce funds, resources and staff. The well documented result is that community organisations can find themselves subject to debilitating internal conflict, poor governance and financial management, and are sometimes at odds with their own membership and each other.

This situation has been exacerbated by the lack of national policy clarity about who these urban organisations are supposed to represent and how they are to be governed. Are different governance arrangements needed for organisations that deliver community services, as opposed to those operating business enterprises? As Leah Armstrong highlights in the opening quote to this chapter, an overly simplistic view of ‘community’ has become entrenched in government policy, program and funding frameworks, where it is equated with the expectation that there should be a collective, community-wide basis to service delivery and the distribution of any benefits flowing from government funding. This has flowed through to expectations about the governance of organisations which have been tagged by governments as being ‘community organisations’. These are subject to idealistic expectations that they will have ‘community representation’, ‘community participation’, engage in ‘community consultations’ and so on.^[3]

Governments and the private sector commonly prefer to deal with local organisations that are ‘representative’ in this manner. They then look to these organisations to speak for and make decisions on behalf of ‘the community’, when this is invariably a highly fluid, mixed set of sub-groups. Even organisations set up to represent a specific location, or sub-group within a location, are still expected to treat their members as a community of like-minded people with similar interests, goals and priorities. Under such institutional conditions, governments have promoted the ‘community’ as a benchmark for fair representation, equitable distribution of resources and benefits, proper consultation, the source of legitimacy, and the rightful recipient of ‘downwards’ accountability.

Hand in hand with the murky concept of community goes that of ‘family’. While the important role of extended families in the domestic economies and social systems of Indigenous communities is well documented (see Finlayson 1991; Macdonald 2000; Smith 2000; Sutton 1998), it is not clear to what extent (or how) they might provide a positive basis for governance and economic development. Indeed, it is commonly asserted that Indigenous family relationships are highly problematic for good organisational governance and undermine economic development outcomes. The family is viewed according to a dysfunctional, deficit model, not as a form of contemporary social and economic capital.

Yet the notion of ‘family’ has long been the central ordering principle within Indigenous Australian societies, both in their traditional and contemporary modes. Invoked in almost every context and in every discussion, ‘family’ is the core unit, at both an actual and conceptual level, in Indigenous social and economic life (see Smith 2005; Sutton 1998). In particular, the extended family is the primary residential form, with each individual’s investment in family relationships widely distributed across expanding networks of relatedness.

Today, families of polity (cf. Sutton 1998) form the backbone of Indigenous communities and many local organisations, thereby linking an extended family group identity to organisational identities and forms of political representation. In this manner, extended families not only have a form of internal governance, they are also embedded into other layers of governance at community and regional levels, and outwards.

So, why is it that family participation in governance and the business arena is seen so negatively? Increasingly, Indigenous families in communities have come to be associated with images of organisational nepotism and corruption, disputation and violence, debilitating factionalism, self-interested decision making, insular thinking and low business expertise. The transformation of the Indigenous family from a positive to a negative symbol has a long history in Australian colonialism.^[4] In recent times, its image has further deteriorated under public and media criticism of family violence and dysfunction in some communities, and their role in poor organisational management and governance. In regard to the latter, a report by the Office of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations (ORAC)^[5] found that:

The involvement of families in enterprise and commercial projects is seen as especially problematic. The Indigenous family lies at the heart of values of reciprocity, mutual responsibility and obligation. Because of this, it is argued that these institutional rules of family life cannot be trusted in the world of capitalism, business management and profit making. The family has thus become positioned as the antithesis of accountability, transparency and fairness; a form of ‘cultural virus that infects economic development’ (Ah Mat 2003: 3). For many stakeholders, ‘community’ is posed as the preferable unit for a more legitimate, inclusive form of governance, and for generating economic development.

There is certainly a plethora of evidence documenting the negative impacts of family politics on organisational governance, community life, and business success. But is that the whole story? Does family involvement in economic development initiatives and governance arrangements have to operate as a deficient cultural institution? Do core Indigenous values and relationships have to be entirely excluded from the governance of economic development initiatives in order for them to be successful? Can the two be reconciled? The experience of Yarnteen Corporation provides evidence for some alternative conclusions and options.