Building from the bottom-up: Indigenous development initiatives from the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Territory, Australia

Abstract

Facilitating the voluntary mobility of Indigenous Australians off their ancestral lands to areas where better education and job opportunities exist, and where there are higher standards of services, is one of the principles that underlies the Council of Australian Governments’ National Indigenous Reform Agreement. For many Indigenous Australians who live on Indigenous-owned lands in remote Australia, the future lies not in being “yarded up like cattle” but in being on their homelands, where kinship, culture and ecological knowledge serve as reservoirs of creative alternatives to state development projects. This desire to remain on country has seen Indigenous Australians in remote regions build innovative, community-based development projects, combining their own knowledge systems with science to provide benefits to their country and communities, as well as to Australia more broadly. Show more