Indigenous Peoples and Accounting. The Gift of Mutual Emancipation

Abstract

Much of the existing literature, even when seeking emancipation, continues to reproduce a colonial tone by positioning Indigenous peoples primarily as subjects of domination and in need of liberation. Our study deliberately challenges this tendency by examining the accounting experiences of Aboriginal peoples within two Australian Indigenous corporations, Aroma and Fairwind, in a way that emphasizes reciprocity and shared vulnerability. Through a qualitative field study design, and drawing on Bourdieu’s gift theory, we argue that accounting practices constrain both Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors alike, thereby destabilizing the colonial narrative that frames Indigenous people solely as dominated. Instead, our findings suggest that emancipation must be conceived inclusively, extending beyond Indigenous communities to all who are subjected to the disciplining effects of accounting. While our stories echo the literature on the marginalization of Indigenous peoples through accounting, they also reveal how Indigenous participants identify the everyday oppressions experienced by those in mainstream society. In offering this recognition back to us, they provide what can be understood as a “gift”—a perspective that unsettles the usual tendency of the literature by highlighting the shared conditions of constraint and the possibilities for collective emancipation.