1. Adapting Development Practice to
Complex Indigenous Contexts
Mark Moran
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2. Indigenous Peoples of the World
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Gross approximations due to difficulties of classification
350 Million people
5000 distinct Indigenous nations, living in 70 nation states
5% of the World’s population, but 10% of the World’s poor
Disproportionate and intractable disadvantage
95% live in developing countries
Aid agencies internationally typically do not differentiate
their work with Indigenous peoples
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3. Identity and Heterogeneity
• UN has resisted a universal definition, but following four
characteristics frequently cited
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historical antecedence to particular territories
voluntary perpetuation of cultural distinctiveness
self-identification and state recognition
experience of subjugation, marginalisation, dispossession,
exclusion or discrimination (non-dominant)
• Heterogeneity resists classification
• Reindeer herders (Saami, Scandinavia), shifting
cultivators (Karen and other hill tribes along ThaiBurmese border), hunter gatherers and forest dwellers
(central Africa), casino wealthy tribes of North America
• Diaspora, as well as homeland - urban and remote
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4. Political Identity
• (Levi and Maybury-Lewis 2012)
• Share a common discourse of rights and social justice
against the nation state that encompasses them.
• Indigenous peoples are generally locked in a political
contest with a more dominant mainstream.
• Most challenging is the political relativities and
complexities from the interaction with the dominant other.
• Although critical important, rights frameworks are not
enough. Capabilities must exist in governments and
Indigenous orgs to exercise them.
• High levels of sociocultural and natural capital, compared
to lower levels of human, physical and financial capital.
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5. Development Disarray
• Consensus on outcomes but disarray on how to get there
• ‘closing the gap’ indicators relative to the mainstream
drive service delivery, but it cannot be assumed that
Indigenous people aspire to the mainstream
• Competing worldview and development pathways
• Welfare and other (including native title) benefits, where
possible, open up choices otherwise not available.
• Political representation through Indigenous organisations
may be considered more important than engagement in
the economy and mainstream institutions
• Locally-based livelihoods, including subsistence,
parenting, cultural maintenance, and ‘caring for country’
maybe more important than employment and enterprise
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6. The Third Space
• Cultural differentiation and calls for ethno-development
• Indigenous development is often understood monoculturally, but people engaged in and intercultural dynamic
with the more dominant society
• Interculturalism beyond respecting difference, to learning
exchange and reciprocity in mutual relationship.
• Both knowledge systems should be practised with equal
human, technological and financial resources, with spaces
for exchange of knowledge, methodologies and practices
that ensure the ongoing development of both systems
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7. Complex problems
• Indigenous settings as complex development contexts.
• Regardless of the development model or logic, problems
exist in their practical implementation.
• Self-governance, economic enterprise, cultural revival,
native title, community development, stabilizing safety,
incoming management, welfare reform.
• Highly localised – problems in generalising best practice
• Development problems tend to be complex
• High causal density, lack of linearity
• Reality of practice is transaction intensive, incremental,
learning and evolving through doing.
• dMe
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8. Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation
• Andrews, M., L. Pritchett and M. Woolcock. 2012.
• solves particular problems in particular local contexts
(rather than transplanting solutions);
• creates an authorising environment for decision-making
with experimentation and positive deviance;
• facilitates active, ongoing and experiential (and
experimental) learning and the iterative feedback of
lessons into new solutions; and
• engages broadly with change agents/political elites, to
ensure implementation and political support.
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9. ACFID Practice Note
Principles for Development Practice in Aboriginal &
Torres Strait Islander Communities in Australia
Gemina Corpus

10. Need and Purpose
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ACFID's Development Practice Committee (DPC)
identifies the best practices that contributes to
development effectiveness and publishes these in a
‘practice note’ series.
• Programs and services traditionally targeting Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Australians have been based on
an ineffective service delivery model.
• Development approaches based on collective learnings of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Working group
members.
• Aims to guide the practice of NGOs so that they support
and strengthen the goals and work of Indigenous leaders
and organisations.

11. Unique Context
• Indigenous communities are different to international
developing communities in 4 main ways:
– Large number of government departments, Indigenous
organisations and private service providers
– Welfare, as opposed to a development, approach
– History of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations
– Gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous wellbeing outcomes

12. Core principles
1. Participation
9. Flexibility and incremental change
2. Cross-cutting issues
10. Stability and long-term engagement
3. Sustainability through governance 11. Partnering
4. Rights based
12. Productive relationships
5. Intellectual property
13. Evidence-based
6. Advocacy and indigenous voice
14. Strengths-based
7. Strategic policy uptake
15. Place-based
8. Devolution
16. Do no harm
Different INGOs bring different emphasis to these
principles, and according to context

13. World Vision International
LEAP – Learning through Evaluation with Accountability and Planning
Quantitative and
qualitative data
collection points
A participatory, action learning cycle, embedded within a program context

14. Community development is not sufficient
• There are examples of effective community development
practice. The challenges of building participation,
reaching consensus and sustainable governance in
communities can be achieved.
• The harder yards are in getting the system to respond, to
join up its many different silos and levels, to satisfy its
multiplicity of ‘conditions’.
• Deficit in the collective ‘capability’ of governments to
provide an enabling developmental system.
• Governments often do not recognise ‘development’ when
it is occurring

15. Principles & values for good relationships
• Top criteria (in order) relating to community life:
– Understands and supports our relationship and responsibilities
to our community
– Demonstrates an understanding and respect for culture
– Includes us in decision making at the start of the project with the
planning of activities
– Gives us enough time to think about what we want to say, and
supports us to say what we think
– Understands the pressures of community life and how these
impact on our capacity to participate
– Understands our relationship and responsibilities to our land

16. Strategic development projects
• Not only for INGOs.
• Supplement rather than be seen as a substitute for service
delivery.
• Strategically applied to tackle intractable issues; e.g.
home ownership and associated land reform.
• Used as part of the policy making apparatus, to discover,
trial, evaluate and learn.

17. Knowledge Management
• Collect the body of knowledge of what is already working
‘developmentally’.
• Make monitoring and evaluation integral to all program
activity and use this to build an evidence base (but include
qualitative measures)
• Communicate information to practitioners and
stakeholders through publications and a web-based
information portal.
• Develop practice manuals and tools.

18. Workplace
• Career pathways for development workers.
• Career path for Indigenous development workers, to be
working internationally.
• Broaden the scope of Indigenous leadership courses
• Masters of Development Practice (Indigenous
Development).
• Remote employment policies.
• Network development workers.

19. A third way
• Two modalities of hands-off or battle-stations.
• Indigenous organisations and leaders want and need
support, but they want a particular kind of support.
• We need to ensure that Indigenous organisations and
services providers can be on the same playing field.
• Most importantly we need to value and respect that the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community seek to
be supported to lead their own agendas in a way that
has meaning and purpose for them.
• Decision making needs to be led locally and we can
enable this by putting up options and going through the
consequences of each of the decisions without actually
making the decisions on behalf of others.

20. Recent positive developments
• World Vision MOU with the Australian Government on
Indigenous Development Effectiveness
• Coordinator General for Remote Indigenous Service: set
of principles to guide their work in RSD communities, in
consultation with NGOs and Indigenous organisations
• ACFID Review of the Practice Note
• APONT and NGOs in the Northern Territory: Principles for
a partnership-centred approach for NGOs working with
Aboriginal organisations and communities in The Northern
Territory