Was the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission an act of dispossession?

Abstract

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) has been described as one of the most comprehensive regional and national governance structures for Indigenous people in Australia. This paper looks briefly at its operational life between 1990 and 2005 and focusses on its abolition, arguing that this was an act of dispossession. The ATSIC was, for its time, a remarkable achievement for both the nation state and Indigenous people. Acting as an institution to both represent and deliver services to Indigenous people, the ATSIC model was, and could have remained, a powerful organisation for enacting critical change. Constructed and then removed by the nation state, the ATSIC's abolition dispossessed Indigenous people of a political framework dedicated to organising an Indigenous collective voice. This dispossession, different from earlier waves of dispossession from land, resources and cultural freedoms, can be understood by the application of critical Indigenous institutional analysis. Through its own structure and electoral representation, the ATSIC had made visible the quest for self-determination and gave Indigenous people decision-making powers not since replicated. Redirecting ATSIC's limited decision making back to government exposed the illusion of control. The ATSIC's abolition left a void in the growing capability of Indigenous people to self-determine and a gaping hole in Australia's national political imagination.