Overview of Issues

The severity and duration of the Pandemic, alongside recent bushfires and floods in Australia, combined with the impacts of ever-present climate change and economic stress continue to test individuals, organisations and communities in unexpected ways. Internationally and in Australia, Indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by such disasters, which exacerbate pre-existing structural inequalities and discrimination.

With government funding, essential services, food, vaccines and critical support being poorly coordinated and sometimes entirely absent during these unfolding disasters, Indigenous communities and their own local organisations have taken on the job of governing the risks, impacts and recovery efforts of simultaneous disasters.

And yet we know little about how they have been going about this vital work.

CAEPR and AIGI have been working with organisations and community members on how they have been governing the pandemic. The research concluded that there is a pre-existing Indigenous capability for ‘adaptive self-determination’ in Indigenous organisations and communities, which enabled them to collectively address the pandemic’s multiple impacts on their families. Similar stories emerged from research into the Black Summer Bushfires, and resonate with stories coming out of the floods. There is much that governments, emergency services, industry and the public can learn from how Indigenous peoples are engaged in governing the multiple threats of disasters in Australia.