Paper short abstract:

This paper provides an ethnographic account of current reforms in Indigenous affairs in the Kimberley region of Australia, highlighting the discrepancies between global presentations and local business and the limits of neo-liberal management for the implementation of indigenous human rights.

Paper long abstract:

After changing its position and supporting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Australian Government has declared on the international stage that it considered its current laws and policies to be "consistent with the spirit of the Declaration". This paper provides an ethnographic account of current reform initiatives in service delivery to remote Indigenous communities in the Fitzroy Valley (Kimberley region, Western Australia). In particular, the presentation focuses on the role of Indigenous Engagement Officers recruited by the Government to establish and put to work Local Implementation Plans (LIPs), highlighting the difficulties to act as mediator in a process that despite being presented as a new way of doing business with Indigenous Peoples, pursues an agenda and priorities defined in Perth and Canberra.

The presentation situates the current reforms both in the history of Indigenous policies in Australia and in the political history of the remote town of Fitzroy Crossing. While the establishment of the Fitzroy Futures Forum - whose governing committee is an important actor in the follow-up of the LIP - was saluted as an illustration of good practice, stemming as it was from a community initiative against violence and alcohol abuse, several years on it demonstrates the contradictions and difficulties faced by subaltern actors in the institutionalisation of their agency by the State.