Inherent in many rural Indigenous business support programs are Anglo-European assumptions about business, family, wealth, a linear business growth trajectory and the role of economic development intermediaries. While these approaches have merit, they can also have unintended consequences and exacerbate trauma. This occurs when Indigenous entrepreneurs experience the incongruence between an expectation to maximise profit and deeply held cultural values prioritising relationships with people and with Country.

The Maganda Makers Business Club is a collective of nearly 150 venturing Kimberley Indigenous Women who reject imposed norms and centre deeply held Indigenous cultural values and ways of doing business that balance relationships between people, Country and Community.

Our session answers the question, what happens in a regional economic development ecosystem when you focus on increasing the capacity of a network of Indigenous female leaders to have a greater impact in their communities using small businesses as a vehicle for their empowerment?

In our case study, you will hear from the Maganda Makers Business Club co-founders: It’s grass-roots leader, Natasha Short, a Jaru woman originally from Halls Creek, now based in Kununurra. Short has assembled an unlikely team of partners and allies, an East-Coast-based philanthropic trust committed to systems change (Sir Robert Menzies Foundation for Leadership) and an NGO specialising in women’s financial inclusion throughout Asia and the Pacific (Good Return Limited).

This presentation will explore how Maganda Makers (and their collaborators) are upending development logics operating throughout rural and remote Australia that fail to account for Aboriginal worldviews and unique conceptualisation of venturing. The panel will also share their collaboration practice principles and how they ensure this movement is always Indigenous-led, healing-centred, relational, and transformative and build the capacity of existing Indigenous women’s community of leaders.