Abstract
This paper discusses work in progress with an Indigenous housing association in Central Australia. It builds on and extends a 2-year policy and planning project that identified the need for systemic intervention across organizations at the local level. Engagement is with individuals and groups within the local context of organizations, but the context is shaped by local and global challenges. Thus the social, historical, cultural, political, economic, and environmental context in which organizations operate needs to be considered in designs for the future. This impacts on postcolonial learning, public policy, cultural knowledge management, and governance (used in this sense as systemic and distributed leadership for problem solving). Three questions focus the learning: “Are we doing things right? Are we doing the right thing? In whose opinion and is mightiness connected with rightness? (Flood and Romm, 1996, p. 129). The participatory governance approach is adapted from a healthy cities/settings approach that maximizes the multiplier effects of working across sectors and disciplines2: This approach can assist in (i) systemic thinking and informing interventions so as to avoid making changes that do not consider the wider implications, (ii) enhancing an understanding of the linked nature of social and environmental concerns, and (iii) developing problem-solving strategies based on ontological and epistemological awareness.
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McIntyre, J. Yeperenye Dreaming in Conceptual, Geographical, and Cyberspace: A Participatory Action Research Approach to Address Local Governance Within an Australian Indigenous Housing Association. Systemic Practice and Action Research 16, 309–338 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1027302806366
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1027302806366