Australian Indigenous Entrepreneurship: A Capital-Based View

Abstract

<jats:p> Encouraging entrepreneurship has been advocated as the most promising avenue for economic development of Indigenous communities in Australia. Unfortunately, the number of Indigenous people engaged in small businesses in Australia is low compared with participation rates in other countries. One explanation suggested for this low participation rate in small business is that Indigenous Australians lack the traits or cultural attitudes necessary for success. This paper advocates a different view, arguing instead that analysing Indigenous access to capital in its multiple forms provides for a richer explanation – and exploration – of the barriers to Indigenous entrepreneurship. </jats:p>

Indigenous entrepreneurship in timber furniture manufacturing: The Gumatj venture in Northern Australia

“…This paper has five significant outputs. First, is the revelation a few Indigenous Yolngu people (with external contributions) found a pathway through the socio economic and cultural elements, that have been earlier identified (Furneaux & Brown, 2008;Russell -Mundine, 2007) as barriers to Australian Indigenous entrepreneurial endeavours. Admittedly, at times the participants struggled to fulfil their visionary ambition to operate a new sustainable enterprise in the pursuit of economic and social goals for their community.…”

“…The Indigenous Small Business Fund (a component of the 1999 Indigenous Employment Policy) was designed to foster the creation of entrepreneurial enterprises owned, operated and managed by Australian Aboriginals (Australian Government, 2008). In spite of the concept of entrepreneurship being a promising avenue for promoting Indigenous economic independence, and in particular tourism activity (Russell -Mundine, 2007), few instances of substantial success have been recorded (Furneaux & Brown, 2008), although a number of barriers for Indigenous entry have been identified (Foley, 2003;.…”

“…Although identification of the specific circumstances of Indigenous entrepreneurs may vary across environments from a rich background of conventions (e.g., World Bank, International Labour Organisation) Peredo and colleagues (2004: 5) nominated three core features when they wrote "Attachment to ancestral lands and their resources, modern subsistence economic arrangements, and distinctive languages …" are features that define Indigenous people in general. Particularly, these three attributes have been identified by Russell-Mundine (2007) within an array of conditions, which include financial, human, technical and social capital (Foley, 2006;Furneaux & Brown, 2008), business acumen and market accessibility (Foley, 2006) formal education (Daly, 2000), interested personnel and infrastructure (Foley, 2003;Missens, Dana & Anderson, 2007), as primary obstacles for Australian Indigenous business ventures. And in spite of the pragmatic commitment of the Australian government to implement Indigenous business programmes by encouraging educational and vocational training as well as business skills advice and support the severe and restrictive demands (e.g., a business plan, numeracy and literacy competencies, industry experience) discourage Aboriginal business participation and their engagement remains low.…”

“…Furthermore, the CDEP scheme, which was introduced as a work alternative to unemployment benefits, is to become a training programme (Participant Fact Sheet, 2009). Moreover, few Indigenous people are employed in the Australian mining sector (Brereton & Parmenter, 2008;Daff & Pearson, 2009;Tiplady & Barclay, 2008), while Australian Indigenous entrepreneurship, modelled on Western principles and lacking cultural attitudes is precarious (Furneaux & Brown, 2008;Russell -Mundine, 2007). The central theme of this paper is Australian Indigenous small business is likely to be facilitated by contexts of strong cultural continuities that generate economic, ecological and social benefits.…”

Female Indigenous entrepreneurship in remote communities in northern Australia

“…Female Indigenous entrepreneurship lacks resonance within the propensity of Australian small business. In spite of the growing geographic and sector spread of Australian Indigenous micro enterprises the Indigenous participation in the Australian mainstream economy is relatively low (Australian Government, 2009;Foley, 2006;Furneaux & Brown, 2008), the ratio of Australian Indigenous to non Indigenous self employment is about 0.3 (Hunter, 2012), and a lack of gender aggregation shows the field of study about female Indigenous owned business remains under developed. With few exceptions much of the literature reports Australian Indigenous entrepreneurial activity in the more popular and research accessible sites to review "… the vastly different experiences of the Indigenous Australian compared to their non -indigenous counterparts" (Wood & Davidson, 2011:312).…”