Is 'Closing the Gap' Enough? Ngarrindjeri ontologies, reconciliation and caring for country

This article is concerned with Ngarrindjeri nation building in the 'contact zone' with the Australian settler state by decentring the colonizer within a range of bureaucratic regimes. Ngarrindjeri engagement with natural resource and cultural heritage management will be used to illustrate the relationship between globalization, community governance, education, sustaining 'culture', Indigenous well-being, and reconciliation and its links to the Australian government Closing the Gap initiatives. This article connects Ngarrindjeri lived experience to the theorization of processes for self-recovery and social transformation that open possibilities for broad-based local and global coalitions, which include political solidarity in the interests of just Indigenous 'reinhabitation' and decolonization.