Customary land is commonly perceived as a barrier to economic development and indigenous entrepreneurship in Pacific Island countries. We turn this proposition on its head, arguing that customary land provides a solid foundation for indigenous entrepreneurs who wish to achieve social, cultural and environmental, as well as economic, goals for their businesses. Furthermore, we assert that appropriate tools are needed to measure the success of indigenous businesses on customary land, as conventional tools have a narrow focus on economics that fails to capture the more holistic, sustainable development goals that indigenous people hope to achieve through their businesses. The indicators we utilise relate to socio-cultural, economic and environmental sustainability. The tool’s usefulness was scrutinized through pre-testing on two indigenous businesses in Fiji; this revealed that culturally oriented tools are essential if the sustainability of indigenous business is to be measured in terms that are meaningful to Pacific communities.

This paper explores the emancipatory impulse of Indigenous social innovation and social enterprise. Indigenous approaches to solving social disparities reflect a perpetual search for innovative ways to change the circumstances of Māori. Power is an understudied dimension of social innovation and social enterprise. This paper explores the power dynamics that structure the disadvantage and marginalisation that cause populations to be underserved by markets and that limit their access to resources. We highlight that it is not power per se that enables social change: rather, it is power shifts. Through a single, richly contextualised case study of a well-known Māori social innovator, Dr Lance O’Sullivan, we reveal and illustrate the nuances of Indigenous entrepreneurship in the Far North of Aotearoa New Zealand. The case epitomises the transformative impact a social entrepreneur can have on the provision of healthcare amid market and policy failures.

Art centres fulfil many functions in remote regions as a source of Indigenous identity and creativity; as a link to the global art market; as centres for community engagement and participation; and as a source of social capital providing a range of services for local communities. They are dependent on funding from State and Federal authorities and they are identified as one of the success stories in remote community development. However, they face an uncertain future in the light of their multiple functions and their position as both a source of traditional identity and a link to an external art market. The article highlights the challenges faced by government in the evaluation of their effectiveness and contribution; and in particular discusses the suitability of the hybrid economy model as a representation of their functions.

This paper reports on a project conducted with representatives of indigenous Māori organizations that are active in New Zealand land-based sectors. The primary aim of the research was to assist these organizations in thinking about their current and future positioning with regard to climate change. Using Peter Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology as a broad framework for the research, the paper first seeks to capture some of the likely issues that enable and constrain strategic activity in the climate change arena. It then uses various soft systems modelling tools to research and structure a debate to consider the desirability and feasibility of particular interventions.

With the widespread shift from models of welfare to business-led development, capacity development offers a useful lens from which to consider the emergence of Indigenous social enterprise as a business-led development approach. We explore capacity development from the international development literature and identify capacity development principles in the context of an Indigenous social enterprise in remote northeast Arnhem Land. Here, Aboriginal Australians continue to experience poverty and marginalisation. This paper provides an ethnographic example of the relationship between Indigenous social enterprise and capacity development. Identifying principles of capacity development in this rich context reveals the remit of the Indigenous social enterprise privileges environmental stewardship and cultural maintenance.

This paper explores the influence of institutions on indigenous entrepreneurship within the muttonbird economy of Ngāi Tahu (a New Zealand Māori tribe). It determines that colonisation removed the traditional Ngāi Tahu institution of executive authority which once regulated muttonbird exchange. Without this regulatory function whānau (family) birders compete against each other at their own expense and to the benefit of traders. As a consequence the birders are constrained in applying their birding knowledge and abilities to realise market opportunity. Furthermore, declining returns and harvesting pressure is in some cases reducing the financial and natural capital of whānau, whilst threats to continuing birding culture potentially undermines the socio-human capital contained within inherited traditions and the maintaining of kinship connections. It is argued that the development of a contemporary executive authority to regulate exchange and market product may reinvigorate entrepreneurial birding activities.

Indigenous entrepreneurs represent a growing segment of the business community in many countries, but face sometimes stark challenges in starting and running enterprises. The success of indigenous entrepreneurs matters because they draw upon their indigeneity as sources of inspiration and innovation, contribute to the collective wellbeing of indigenous peoples, and some represent world class exemplars of sustainable ways of doing business. While enterprise assistance for entrepreneurs is widely accepted as a worthwhile use of public funds few guidelines exist to help policy makers and providers understand the needs of indigenous entrepreneurs and how best to respond. In this paper, we use the theoretical lens of entrepreneurial identity to provide insight into this challenging context. Taking an identity perspective may enable us to tease out how identifying as a Māori entrepreneur can enable and also hinder change in this community context. In doing so we lay foundations for future empirical work.

Governmental development strategies focus on entrepreneurship as a major resource for the economic development of indigenous peoples. While initiatives and programs are locally based, there is a debate in the academic literature about how contextual factors affect the identification of indigenous entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and integrate indigenous entrepreneurship literature to identify the main indigenous entrepreneurship models. Thus, a systematic literature review was conducted. In total, 25 relevant articles were identified in selected electronic databases and manual searches of Australian Business Deans Council ranked journals from January 1, 1995 to the end of 2016. Using a systematic analysis of sociocultural contexts and locations, the paper proposed that a typology of contextualized indigenous entrepreneurship models was possible, that were classified as urban, remote and rural. The parameters of these models, and their potential theoretical and practical applications to the study and practice of indigenous entrepreneurship ecosystems were also outlined.