Decentralisation, population mobility and the CDEP scheme in central Cape York Peninsula

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme in the Coen region of Cape York Peninsula from January 1996 to May 1997, prior to implementation of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and Spicer Reports on CDEP. During this time the inter-relationship between contemporary patterns of population mobility, Aboriginal aspirations, and the CDEP scheme provided a foundation for local social and economic development.

Since 1993, the Coen Regional Aboriginal Corporation (CRAC) has run a CDEP scheme in the township of Coen and at a number of outstations across the region, which were serviced from the township. The local CDEP scheme has been a key factor in the establishment and development of these outstations and has facilitated the decentralisation associated with them. However, rather than marking a return to a 'traditional lifestyle', the region's outstation movement has been closely tied to local Aboriginal aspirations for development and a more productive engagement with the contemporary 'hybrid' economy.

At the time of the case study, although the local CDEP scheme had facilitated regional decentralisation and aided the resumption of high levels of Aboriginal population mobility (which previously characterised both 'pre-contact' and colonial Aboriginal lifestyles before a period of sedentarisation associated with the granting of award wages and the resulting decline of Aboriginal employment in the region's pastoral industry), CDEP's relationship to contemporary patterns of population mobility was ambiguous. The development of outstations, access to vehicles and the CDEP scheme supported 'circular' mobility within the administrative region. However CRAC's administrators and the implementation of the local CDEP scheme acted to restrict other forms of population mobility, particularly mobility between administrative regions on Cape York Peninsula.