Will Sanders argues that Indigenous community governance is as much about process as about structures and that dispersed governance has benefits as well as costs. In doing so he challenges some common assumptions of would-be reformers of Indigenous community governance.

Will Sanders analyses 2001 Census data relating to Indigenous people living in the Alice Springs town camps as compared to three other population groups: Indigenous people in the rest of Alice Springs, non-Indigenous people in Alice Springs and Indigenous people living in the outlying communities of the region around Alice Springs. He identifies inadequacies in...

Bill Arthur, Josephine David-Petero, Victor McGrath and Elizah Wasaga analyse data from a 2004 reinterview of a survey sample of Indigenous males and females aged between 15 and 24 years in Torres Strait which explores the careers and aspirations of Indigenous young people. The survey was first conducted in 1999.

Boyd Hunter outlines the conceptual and empirical issues that affect the measurement of social capital, and discusses some possible roles for social capital in describing Indigenous poverty. He advocates a model of social capital that focuses on the structure of social networks to limit the scope for misunderstanding arising from cross-cultural differences in the views...

Sarah Holcombe explores the tensions between localism and regionalism within the Indigenous polity of the Haasts Bluff Land Trust. Implications of these focused networks for proposed larger-scale service delivery and governance arrangements are explored to cast some light on the emerging issue of regionalising local community government.