Indigenous Cultural Policy Working Group
In December 1996, the Cultural Ministers Council reviewed the preliminary conclusions of a survey of members' policies on Indigenous cultural development. The survey showed that, while members had made significant commitments under existing policies to assist Indigenous cultural development, they were uneven, poorly coordinated and quite diffuse in their impact.
The Cultural Ministers Council noted that several key agencies—including the then Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Australia Council—were in the process of significant policy and funding reviews. The Cultural Ministers Council acknowledged that these reviews were likely to have a significant impact on the Indigenous cultural sector during 1997. The Cultural Ministers Council agreed that a working group should be established to monitor developments and to identify opportunities for joint action.
The working group’s terms of reference were to identify opportunities for collaborative action between the Australian Government and the states and territories.
A number of priorities in each jurisdiction were raised by the working group, with the key ones being:
- Access to family records
- Language maintenance/oral histories
- Training of Indigenous people at art and craft centres in business planning, marketing, accessing distribution networks and setting up new initiatives such as Internet access
- Copyright and other intellectual property issues
- Enhanced industry statistical data
One of the responsibilities of the Cultural Ministers Council Archives Working Group was the improvement of access to, and awareness of, records of national cultural significance and the documentation of the culture and history of Indigenous Australians.
The Statistics Working Group, on the recommendation of the Indigenous Cultural Policy Issues Working Group, undertook a project concerned with the adequacy of existing statistical data on Indigenous culture. It also undertook, on a trial basis, the collection of data on Australian Government, state and territory Indigenous cultural funding.
The Indigenous Intellectual Property Toolkit Working Group was established in 2001 to develop and implement a strategy to assist the Cultural Ministers Council to meet its obligations, including action plans, Indigenous performance monitoring strategies and benchmarks, in accordance with the Council Of Australian Governments (COAG) Framework on Reconciliation.