Using a unique data provided from the arts council, the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian govern-ment’s arts funding and advisory body, you will hear about the struggles and strategies a peak body uses to obtain legitimacy in a changing world over 45 years since its inception in 1972. This presentation presents content analysed in a longitudinal study of annual reports, comparing Aboriginal content to non-Aboriginal content (text, images and funding allocations) in annual reports. Findings reveal tensions between policy statements evident in annual reports (i.e., Chair’s reports and images used) about the centrality of Aboriginal arts to national cultural policy versus Aboriginal funding, tensions in which are played out through board messages to stakeholders and money provided for Aboriginal arts projects. It is argued that the results provide accounts of appropriation of Aboriginal visual and textual content without appropriate funding allocations, suggesting that board members decisions are sometimes not in the best interest of the wider society, thus favouring excellence over equity.