"Governance has to do with how people organise themselves to get things done. The heart of governance is the rules a community or business puts in place to meet its overall objectives: how authority and responsibility are distributed, how disputes are resolved, what our obligations are to each other, and how we work together.
Sometimes those rules are made by outsiders-that's what happens in colonial situations. Sometimes societies make them for themselves. Sometimes they write them down in constitutions. Sometimes they exist in oral traditions and in teachings passed from generation to generation. But all societies have rules that govern how they act.
Effective governance means having rules that are capable of achieving your objectives."
Definition provided by Professor Stephen Cornell, Co-director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
For more information on good Indigenous governance visit the following websites:
- Indigenous Community Governance Research Project
- 2003 Building Effective Indigenous Governance Conference
- 2002 Indigenous Governance Conference
- Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development
Download a copy of Celebrating Indigenous Governance - Success stories of the Indigenous Governance Awards. This resource was published by Reconciliation Australia and draws on the applications from the 2005 Awards.