Meetings

Next Meeting to be held: 12.30-2.00pm, date 11th December, Red Room, Northern Institute

Meeting 7

The Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) and Indigenous Corporations. A number of us in the group have directly participated in developing applications to be submitted to the IAS, and at this meeting we talked through this process. We also heard from Mike Harrison on the recent history and current development of Tiwi Corporations.

7th Meeting (06.11.2014) Transcript

Meeting 6

How might we participate or intervene in initiatives currently reworking practices of everyday life and land management in Northern Australia? This meeting our discussion focused on policy changes around Natural Resource Management and the new Indigenous Advancement Strategy. Some of us are beginning to look for way to engage as researchers within the context of these new federal government initiatives. As we do so, it seems that within our group we have both longstanding historical experience with changing policy eras in Northern Australia, as well as a range of practical and critical analytic approaches for engaging within and within these shifts as they occur.

Materials for discussion: 

  1. Discussion paper: Dale, Vella, Ryan, Broderick, Hill. Potts, Brewer (2014) National-Scale Governance of Australia’s Community Based NRM Domain: An opportunity for reform
  2. Info on Indigenous Advancement Strategy: IAS-fact_sheet and link: http://www.dpmc.gov.au/indigenous_affairs/index.cfm

Meeting 5

How are practices of governance and indigenous enterprise emerging together? Indigenous governance and the interrelations between indigenous governance and government governance are of interest to many in our group. Working from the policy side, Jim Turnour talked to us about some of the developments around the promotion and formation of indigenous enterprise in Northern Queensland, as both a point of similarity and comparison for those working in the Northern Territory. Then talking about a conference on Indigenous Governance held recently in Canberra, Matt Campbell raised questions about ways in which authority was being constructed within this forum, and ways in which we can begin thinking about these ‘micro-politics’ as another way to notice, and become sensitised to, the effects of the current buzz around governance.

Meeting 4

How can we help each other in our work? At this meeting the CRN Northern Futures team circulated a paper which they had been working on entitled ‘Identifying tensions in the development of Northern Australia: Implications for governance’. They invited comment on the paper in which we revisited themes which are recurring for our group – what is this governance that we talk about, how does it relate to neoliberalising agendas, how might we work analytically and empirically within it?

Questions for discussion: 

  1. How does this paper resonate (or not) for you?
  2. Can you think of theoretical questions or approaches that might help us develop this (theoretical) question of ‘governance in northern Australia’?
  3. If there are irreducible and incommensurable ways of being, are there processes or ways of communicating or being together that do not seek to order and assimilate? How might we go about enabling these?

Meeting 3

In what ways do we do what we do? This meeting we continued to explore some of the methods used by members of the group as they research and participate in practices of governance. We had presentations which talked working with mental models, about modelling systems of Darwin Harbour, and about a local knowledge event to be held later in the year. We talked about beginning to develop a skills and experience register which could be useful for both ourselves as a group, and as a way to communicate what we do to others. And we continued to discuss the book we are working towards on Governance and Northern Australia.

Meeting 2

Why a governance group? Many of us working in the CRN and Northern Institute  are not only caught up in questions about governance and Northern Australia, we are also asked to articulate this work to others. At this meeting we talked a bit about the reasons why the group has come about, and how we might support each other in our work. We also explored some of the methods circulating within the group for researching, and participating in, governance practice such as working collaboratively from the ground up, creating genealogies of governance concepts and processes, and Governance Systems Analysis (GSA).

Meeting 1

Where do we start? On the 6th April, 2014 we held our first Lunchtime Governance Discussion. There were 15 of us at the meeting, with some people calling in from Cairns, Melbourne and Arnhem Land. Not everyone knew each other, and by way of introduction most of us presented to the group our response to 3 questions: How does the work you are doing relate to governance? What interesting or different insight have you gained about governance in your recent research? What theoretical or practical problem to do with governance are you engaging with at the moment?

 

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