Artists working with Iwantja Arts and Crafts Aboriginal Corporation have been recognised again and again lately—in Queen’s birthday honours, a digital art award, on the cover of Vogue magazine and in Australia’s most significant portraiture prize.

Indulkana, APY Lands, South Australia: Iwantja Arts and Crafts Aboriginal Corporation is one of seven Aboriginal-owned art centres operating in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the north-west region of South Australia.

With a fit-for-purpose governance structure and two decades of experience, Ironbark Aboriginal Corporation is thriving.

Kingston Beach, Tasmania

First, the big picture

The scientific view is that Aboriginal people walked from mainland Australia to Trouwunna/Loetrouwitter (Tasmania) over forty thousand years ago—twenty-eight thousand years before the sea rose to create the island. 

Gr8motive is a smart young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation with a new contract to support young offenders to turn their lives around.

Far north Queensland: Gr8motive Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation was set up in November 2016 by a small team of directors with a big goal, to cultivate sustainable social and economic growth for Indigenous communities.

Broome, Western Australia: In the mid 1980s, a bush meeting of Aboriginal elders from all over the Kimberley resolved to establish two new agencies: a regional centre for law and culture and an independent Aboriginal publishing house. The publishing house conceived in that meeting is Magabala Books (Aboriginal Corporation), and it’s the subject of this story.

For Edie Wright, retired educator and chair of the board of the corporation, those founding elders were bold and visionary:

Barunga, Northern Territory: A year ago, directors of Bagala Aboriginal Corporation launched a project to improve health and create jobs: a robust local public laundry. The Aboriginal community of Barunga is 80 kilometres south-east of Katherine. It’s famous both for the Barunga Statement (calling for a treaty) presented in 1988 to then prime minister Bob Hawke, and as home of the Barunga Festival of music, sport, arts and culture.

Tennant Creek, Northern Territory: Patta Warumungu people were the first Aboriginal group in Australia to negotiate a consent determination within a township. In that sense, Patta Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC has always been at the intense edge of the interaction between western law and Aboriginal law. Then and now, Aboriginal governance structures have been at the centre of all decision-making processes. The corporation is working on reinforcing these processes by having them reflected in their rule book.