Governing Indigenous self‐determination: Autonomy, authority, and community control in Australian public administration

This article examines how Indigenous self‐determination has been shaped through the institutions and practices of Australian public administration over the past five decades. While governments have endorsed self‐determination rhetorically, policy frameworks have consistently operationalised it as community control over service delivery rather than as the transfer of autonomy, authority, or jurisdictional power. Drawing on historical–institutional analysis and informed by Coulthard's concept of strategic domestication, the article shows how incorporation laws, ATSIC, New Public Management reforms, and contemporary partnership arrangements have rendered self‐determination administratively manageable while constraining its political dimensions. The analysis demonstrates how autonomy, authority, and community control have been recognised as discrete administrative domains rather than as interdependent elements of Indigenous self‐government. The article identifies the implications of this pattern for public administration practice, highlighting how administrative systems continue to structure the expression and limits of Indigenous self‐determination.

Points for practitioners

The analysis has implications for practitioners, particularly in understanding how administrative systems shape the scope and expression of self‐determination. The following considerations highlight where administrative practice interacts with, and may constrain, Indigenous decision‐making authority:

Structural limits : Current frameworks often recognise self‐determination through community control within service systems. Practitioners can consider how program settings may reproduce this pattern.