Beyond the Definition Wars: Structural Exclusion, Sovereignty, and the Future of First Nations Social Enterprise in Australia

Beyond the Definition Wars is a 2026 opinion piece by Dr Gaala Watson, written in collaboration with members of the Social Enterprise Development Initiative First Nations Reference Group, Patricia Adjei, Binowee Bayles, Rebecca Blurton, Adam Gowen and Tiarne Shutt. It engages with what the sector has come to call the "definition wars," the ongoing debate in Australia about what a social enterprise is, who qualifies, and who decides. The piece argues that this debate, while real, misses a more fundamental issue: the frameworks used to define, certify, and resource social enterprises were built without First Nations input, and were never designed to recognise First Nations ways of doing business.

The piece traces the Western European origins of the social enterprise concept and explains how its arrival in Australia reproduced those same assumptions, treating social and environmental impact as something a business must prove, rather than something that may be intrinsic to how a First Nations enterprise operates. Certification processes, revenue thresholds, and profit-reinvestment requirements, the tools used to separate genuine social enterprises from "social washing," are shown to carry a different weight when applied to enterprises whose relationship to Country, kinship, and community is foundational rather than additional. The piece also raises the concept of "black cladding," where the appearance of Indigenous ownership is used to access benefits intended for genuinely community-centred enterprises, arguing that a robust framework must be able to name that gap.

The piece closes by distinguishing genuine co-design from consultation, and calling for First Nations peoples to hold real decision-making authority over how their enterprises are recognised and supported.