Closing the Gap: Indigenous Development

Closing the Gap: Understanding Five Essential Foundations for Practical Change

With respect to the wellbeing of Indigenous people in Australia, at the moment there are two agendas running parallel to each other — the ‘Closing the Gap’ agenda and the 'Human Rights' agenda. 

The ‘Closing the Gap’ agenda is technocratic and focussed on delivering what is often called a ‘mainstream’  standard of health, education and economic development for Indigenous people. In practice, so far the ‘Closing the Gap’ agenda is effectively ‘top down, driven by the state (primarily the goals of the Australian Government). As such, there is little allowance for Indigenous worldviews and culture in the programs and projects that target gap closure.

The 'Human Rights' agenda focuses on the rights of Indigenous people to play a major role in determining  their futures for themselves, projecting their own visions of economic, social and cultural development. The Human Rights agenda is effectively ‘bottom up’, and as such is hindered by a lack of legitimacy for this agenda in the eyes of the state, and the general disempowerment of Indigenous people. In most of the current versions of state-sponsored Indigenous development policy, there remains an implicit suspicion that Indigenous culture is an impediment to development.

The presentation argues that these two agendas can be bridged together by a more explicit inclusion of culture in programs and projects that are designed to improve Indigenous well-being. There is a growing body of evidence that directly connects the practice and inclusion of culture to the well-being of Indigenous peoples, and that cultural well-being is a condition precedent to successful development. By definition, the inclusion of culture in ‘Closing the Gap’ policy, program and project development requires the involvement of Indigenous people in that task.  This enables the opportunity for a practical expression of rights.

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