This presentation will look at governance or Aboriginal governance as a process to build or strengthen Aboriginal authority and capacity to define and implement an Aboriginal “development” agenda rather than focus on governance as the means to deliver services or ensure financial accountability. Some Aboriginal groups in the Northern Territory are organizing themselves in different ways to gain control over service delivery; exercise their right to self-determination; create employment and economic opportunities; seek improved or more direct funding arrangements; assert greater autonomy and control; and assert or legitimise Aboriginal authority.

 Building new governance arrangements is not just about putting in place new structural and funding arrangements to represent peoples interests, enforce laws and policies, administer organisations and deliver services or manage natural, social or cultural resources. The danger with this enthusiasm for “effective and capable governing arrangements” is repeating the mistakes of the past by using passive welfare or welfare dependency models to build new Aboriginal governance arrangement.

The challenge for Aboriginal groups, Aboriginal organisations, Governments and their agencies and Politicians is to recognize that governance is more than a process of representation and accountability but is a process of development that builds or strengthens human resource capacity, recognises Aboriginal authority or delegates adequate authority and power, protects Aboriginal rights and meets the unique social, cultural, political and economic needs of Aboriginal peoples.