Bureaucratic Impediments to Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Empowerment, Self-Determination & Self-Management.

This paper examines the context of current social policy and analyzes the bureaucratic impediments to achieving greater coordination of programs and services for Australia's Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Specifically, the paper demonstrates how a "national commitment" involving bureaucratic rationality and imperatives continues to undermine the principles and practices of Aboriginal empowerment, self-determination, and self-management. Aboriginal demands for self-determination and self-management arise from a history of continuous oppression since the European invasion of Australia in 1788. The response of the Australian nation-state to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander concerns about sovereignty have largely been handled through "bureaucratic rationality." Additionally, there exists an unequal relationship that continually places Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the position of having to compromise their prior rights and aspirations in order to take part in the process of negotiation with the Australian nation-state. An example was the development of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy (AEP), both created to give Aborigines decision-making power in the formulation of policies and programs affecting them. However, ATSIC and AEP have consistently failed to give Aborigines local control over critical issues. Another government policy that has had a devastating effect on indigenous people was the establishment of government-managed reserves or mission stations and the relocation of a number of distinct language groups from different parts of the country to be concentrated together on the same settlement. This paper concludes by offering strategies that would lessen differences between government policy and efforts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to achieve empowerment and self-determination. (LP)