• Limitations or Limit conditions:
  • Underlying conditions or sets of situations that cause or initiate the cycle of “poverty”, marginalisation oppression or dependency.
• Predatory systems:
  • These are systems that are perpetuating the oppression cycle by taking advantage of the limitations people experience. These systems need to be identified and negated to free people from the cycle.

As discussed in the previous article Cultural Spaces (An example of the Limit Conditions the people face), one of the limit conditions that create Indigenous “poverty” is that Aboriginal people must engage in foreign cultural spaces, that are controlled by the Dominant Culture.  These spaces marginalise Indigenous groups and they struggle to access the necessary information they need to make choices, find solutions, or communicate their needs.

However this does not explain the factors that keep people from conquering the strange cultural spaces of the “white man’s” world.  In the article on Indigenous poverty we called these factors predatory systems.  In this article I put forward some suggestions as to what specific predatory systems maintain this situation.  These are:

• The Convenience of Maintaining English Dominance
  • Negotiating in English controlled environments
  • Discouraging the development and use of Local Languages
• Low expectations for engaging with Indigenous knowledge and systems
• Accepting short term personnel turn over
• Lack of dependence on local Indigenous workforce
• Systematic favouring of short term outcomes over effective communication
• Reporting of false positives

Explaining myself

Now before I get to that I must point out that this is an extremely complex topic, and that it is very difficult to simplify things as I have.  The mechanisms that maintain the marginalisation of Indigenous  groups are very very complex and subtle.  While there are individuals who take advantage of people’s marginalisation consciously - the chaos of remote communities encourages corruption - most Dominant culture (DC) systems are not consciously designed to oppress people.  But, because I attempt to identify the advantages the Dominant culture might be getting from maintaining Indigenous marginalisation, what I write will be controversial to some, or many.   So please give me some credit that I am not intending to blame anyone and I know I am over simplifying.  But people have been asking for me to write about this, and I would like to start the discussion. So here are my flawed ideas of what are some of the predatory mechanisms maintaining Indigenous disadvantage (please comment on these, I would like others opinions).

I have grouped the predatory mechanism under headings describing the limit conditions they prey on.

Language barriers

The  Convenience of Maintaining English Dominance

Mechanism: English only speakers working in Indigenous communities unknowingly create an advantage to themselves by maintaining an English only environment, by using English as the dominant language or the only language in the work place and at meetings. In this way they empower themselves at the expense of the people, because they prevent people from easily getting the information they require to escape their dependency on these English first language workers.

Advantage: Why does this happen? This system of marginalisation is maintained largely because it is easier for DC workers to use their own native language “English” than working with the difficulty of learning and  utilising local languages.

Negotiating in English controlled environments

Mechanism: Similarly Government and NGOs, by ignoring Indigenous languages, are better able to control the conditions and outcomes of negotiations, surveys, consultations and even education, because in the English speaking environment they create, they limit peoples ability to compete and challenge government workers policies, views and arguments.

Advantage: Government, NGOs and other entities benefit by being able to more easily control, influence  and dominate negotiations.  They can even subconsciously utilise misinformation to get the result they want.

Discouraging the development and use of Local Languages

Mechanism:Government and NGOs working in Aboriginal remote communities, refuse to require or adequately support the training of staff in local Indigenous languages.  Everyone believes that it is too hard.  If they ensured staff developed local language skills this would make the interaction between Indigenous people and the DC an exchange of information between equal parties, rather then all the effort to overcome the language gap being forced on the Indigenous people. Furthermore, DC departments and NGOs do not encourage the production of resources, training, or even dictionaries in Indigenous languages. Their excuse for this is the that people need to just learn English. Only English cannot be learnt well (to a professional level) without utilising Indigenous languages to teach new complex ideas or without access to cross language dictionaries for professional reference. It takes many many years of effective exchange of information between two cultures to effectively chart complex terminology within each language – so that rich meanings can be exchanged. The DC refuses to start this journey in a serious way.

Advantage: The advantage for the system in doing nothing, is that Government and organisations don’t have to put in the money or the effort to change the way they do things. The short term financial gains on sticking with English only win over long term empowerment of Indigenous people.  A case in point is the NT Government’s recent introduction of an English only policy for remote community schools (2009-2010), which strips resources for local language training and utilisation out of remote schools. They did this because of a poorly researched belief that ignoring local languages will some how teach English more effectively. The international evidence shows that ESL kids who learn how to read and write in their own language first are more easily able to learn English, and learn it better than English only speakers.   But for the NT Education department system the savings in money and organisational complexity is clear, they can discard the hippy language experts and even the local Indigenous Teachers, who now have little purpose for being there. In this way the system favours the status quo, English language deficiency in Indigenous communities.

Lack of understanding about Dominant culture systems and knowledge.

Low expectations for engaging with Indigenous knowledge and systems

Mechanism: The imposition of Western culture and ways keeps Dominant Culture (DC) workers comfortable while dis-empowering local Indigenous people, because Indigenous people in remote communities have very little knowledge of how the Western world works (and vice versa). DC workers are not required to truly participate in or learn Indigenous ways of doing things. So they do not learn the difficulties Indigenous people face nor how to use local knowledge to help the people learn DC knowledge.  And the lack of engagement in understanding Indigneous systems prevents DC systems such as policing and education from fitting in with Indigenous systems that would give people more control.

Advantage: Low expectations in this area makes it easier for Government and other organisation to recruit workers even though they are less effective. By ignoring cultural issues, Indigenous understandings, and local Aboriginal systems, short term targets are sometimes met (ie you can get things done quickly), but long term achievements are undermined.

Instability of Personnel and Relationships with the non-indigenous world.

Accepting short term personnel turn over.

Mechanism: There is constant replacement and change in DC personnel in Remote Aboriginal Communities. Most stay 6 months to 2 years. Short term contracts are the accepted norm and there are few services to support personnel to stay in communities long term.  The constant change of personnel in communities undermines stability, relationships, and the creation of useful corporate knowledge/history.  The result is that organisations never learn from their mistakes and continue to push ideas that are based on old assumptions and continue to have negative impacts.

Advantage: This at first glance would not seem to benefit the Australian system because it is costly and ineffective. But it does allow feel good benefits to the Australian mainstream and the Individuals invoved.  I believe this is significant enough to maintain this kind of inefficiency. Going and working in Arnhem Land or other remote communities for a short stint, alleviates our sense of guilt about the Indigenous “problem” in Australia. This is a hard thing to say, but most if not all people (including ourselves at times) tend to feel a sense of “well I’ve done something to help the Indigenous people.” This helps us in the mainstream individually and collectively to feel good about our efforts for Indigenous people and even justifies a subtle blaming of the people themselves. The Australian Mainstream can still effectively say, “Look we are trying to help Indigenous people but its not working, they are not doing enough themselves.” So this “Instability Shark” works in this way; the DC gets the benefits of feeling like it is doing something, without the very difficult task of creating, and supporting long term stability in the remote work force (See our article on Supporting Dominant Culture Personnel to explore how this might be overcome).

Lack of dependence on local workforce.

Mechanism: Indigenous communities are driven by a false economy. Government grants, funds and welfare are the main sources of income, both personal and for businesses, in remote towns.  And alot of this money actually goes to pay income for DC personnel who have come from outside the community.  This situation never improves because the availability of  Government monies, and the tight DC time frames, make it more convenient to simply import new DC personnel when a job needs to be done, rather than train Indigenous people.  Training of local personnel is a lower priority than getting program outcomes.  This is partly because most Government departments consider it someone elses job to do the training.  But the simple fact is the DC simply does not need the local people. In a sense the locals get in the way of building infrastructure, acculturating (…oops, I mean educating), developing industries and running shire council services. This is the despite the fact that these things are suppose to be of benefit to the locals.  Contrast this with 40 years ago when the Christian missions in North East Arnhem had to run everything without masses of funding and access to fly in personnel. They, by simple need, were dependent on training Yolŋu (as there was no one else to do the work that needed to be done) and as a result by 1978 the local people were doing almost everything in the community, including teams of locals building houses, and local bookkeepers.

Advantage: There is of course a huge financial benefit for most personnel who take positions in remote Aboriginal communities, that may play some role in perpetuating the situation.  Like mine workers it is often convenient to stay a while, save your dough and take your cash back south to buy a house.  Plus it is simply easier, and it has become part of the DC way in the “Indigenous Industry”, to rely on enticing contractors and ready trained personnel, with big pay packets, than to deal with the challenges of training Indigenous people.  But the primarily benefit is that the DC (and the Government is a big part of this) is more focused on outcomes than people.  They get more done, much quicker,  if they are not dependent on local labour.  Importing workers ensures jobs get done quickly, statistics get filled, grants get acquitted, and politicians get re-elected.  The alternative, relying on the local workforce is the more difficult and slower path.  The time spent training, upskilling, and letting the people gain experience, slows progress in measurable outcomes – at first.  The hump of getting the first set of locals trained and then relying on them in their inexperience in the next round of work, with the inevitable media outrage at things undone (eg. houses un-built)  is just too much for the DC to take.

Difficulty communicating to Dominant Culture systems.

Systematic favouring of short term outcomes over effective communication.

Mechanism: The Indigenous “Industry” in the NT is a money spinner for the NT government and economy. Solving the problems through better communication might actually reduce the amount of money spent by the Federal Government on communities. While I doubt most in the NT Government actually plan to negate outcomes (some in the private sector definitely take advantage), the drive to be truly cost effective and therefore locally effective in the long term is just not there. Rather the focus seems to be on short term outcomes, or band aid measures.

Advantage: This benefits bureaucrat portfolios, while giving only lip service to long term goals. We all know of the shonky tradesmen in the private sector that will do a dodgy job to save money, well government funding budgets work the other way around. Do a job inefficiently and spend more of your budget may just get you a bigger budget next time round, resulting in more jobs for inefficient buddies (Again I’m not saying this is intentional – but correct me if I am wrong).

Reporting of false positives.

Mechanism: It is easy to create false positives by using poor communication. Even if you genuinely want to be honest, it is all too easy to use good processes and investigate clearly positive comments and communications, while paying limited attention to negative comments and results. Additionally, emphasising the outcomes one is looking for, results in a failure to communicate problems and allow reflection on how people are not being served.

Advantage: False positives (saying something had fantastic outcomes when it really did not)  when reporting on outcomes in Indigenous communities help governments, NGOS and privates businesses working in the “Indigenous industry” presents a good picture to their funders and their voters (who are usually not Indigenous).

Normally we all take for granted the cultural spaces that we move around in, where we understand what is going on and why. It is therefore hard to imagine that someone from another culture stepping into our cultural environment could not see what is happening and why.  It is thus also hard to recognise that their lack of knowledge and experience in our cultural space severely limits their ability to operate to their full human capacity, to make their own choices, or express themselves.  In a foreign  cultural space we cannot feel in control until we come to understand that space.

Often the people helping me to navigate the new cultural environment of Yolngu ceremony, underestimate just how ignorant I am. I sometimes feel like they need to be reminded that I am a Dhunga Balanda (one who does not know, aka stupid ‘white fella’). Often what they do convey seems like surface information, yet they seem to expect that it is sufficient – they might tell me how to move or where to go, but often this does not convey what the underlying story is about, or what is really going on. Such information might enable me to participate like a child in the ceremony, but it would never get me to a place where I would be capable of running one myself, or playing a significant role.

We in the Dominant Culture can forget that schools, hospitals, clinics, councils and boards, are foreign environments to most Yolngu.  We too often only give people surface stories – what they need to do or where they need to go – but leave people feeling confused about the underlying story of what is going on in these places, knowledge that is taken for granted knowledge within ones own culture.  If we do not acknowledge this we cannot create a safe space where people can ask their questions about how Dominant Culture systems operate. If we do recognise this, we might begin to take the time to listen and discover how to answer their questions deeply. If we do not understand this we might not see that we can’t expect them to get up and run the place, while they still need to know why.. why?…Why are we doing that?.

By reflecting on my experience in Yolngu spaces I have come to realise that this provides a picture of one of the limit conditions facing Indigenous Australian, one of the limitations that underlie their disadvantage.  (We discussed limit conditions as a way of understanding Indigenous ‘poverty’ in the previous article.) Many Indigenous people (particularly those from remote areas) are limited in functioning in their full human capacity in ‘westernised’ Cultural spaces.  Unlike my temporary experiences in Yolngu spaces, their  involvement in the Dominant Cultures space is permanent.  They are daily experiencing similar (or worse) limitations in their capacity to what I experienced in participating in Yolngu ceremony.  The strangeness of the Dominant Culture is a daily limitation in their ability to make informed choices, and participate on an equal footing with Dominant culture English speaking personnel, who have been learning how to succeed in Dominant Culture schools, councils, clinics, boards since they were babes. The very normal fact that Indigenous people are new to ‘western’ culture, and that the Dominant Culture often fails to understand that they need more than surface information, becomes possibly the most significant cause of their disadvantage and a major limitation to their success in life.

When he arrived to talk with this leader, he found him just sitting on a mat on his verandah. He looked for chairs, and then corrected himself as he realised that he needed to respect the Elder, in ‘his way of doing this’, and so joined him on the mat. It turned out that the location they were sitting in was not conducive to discussion, as there were a lot of children running around and a lot of noise. The Elder got up and indicated that they would move to a quieter location. He then moved some distance away from the house and sat on the ground there, in the dirt. The visitor was quite shocked that this leader was sitting in the dirt. Again he did not want to offend him, so he sat down beside him there, but he was very disturbed by the fact that they were sitting in the dirt. As the visitor retold this story, he pointed to the dirt beside the road and expressed with great animation “It was just like this dirt here beside the road”.

What this visitor already knew about this Elder prior to their meeting, created an expectation, a picture for him about how he thought this man should behave. We all do this. Based on our world view, we get a picture in our head about how we think something should look, according to our culture. We do it without even realising it, as we are so used to the way our culture does things, that we sometimes think that that is the only way something can be done. We may try and be respectful and go along with things, but inside we are thinking that this different way of doing things is not right or is deficient.

When we are looking in on another culture, we have to be careful that we are not mis-interpreting the situation based on our cultural world view. It could be easy to look at some people in Indigenous communities, and see them sitting in the dirt, and label this as a sign of “poverty”, “inadequacy”or “hopelessness”, because that is what it might mean in our culture. But the earth is considered something more than dirty to many Indigenous people. It is part of something precious. They may even describe it as their mother;

“The Land is my mother. Like a human mother, the land gives us protection, enjoyment, and provides for our needs – economic, social and religious. We have a human relationship with the land: Mother – daughter, son. When the land is taken from us or destroyed, we feel hurt because we belong to the land and we are part of it.”( Djiniyini Gondarra 1980 in Yule Ian R. (Ed.) My Mother the Land, Galiwin’ku, UCA)

When the visitor heard this, his perspective changed. He realised that the act of sitting in the earth could be something more than an act which made you dirty, or a sign of poor status. Many Indigenous people happily sit outside on the ground or even in the dirt, and some even prefer it to inside on a chair. This is not always the result of poverty or lack of furniture, but is a different way of life.

When we see something that does not make sense to us, or makes us feel sorry for someone or feel that there is some injustice, let us remember that we wear cultural glasses, and not make assumptions from a distance. Lets be willing to go and sit beside other people, where ever it may be that they sit, and try and understand their world, their perspectives, their hopes and their true needs. Otherwise we are at risk of judging things from appearances and just from our cultural perspective. We also have to be careful that we are not the ones deciding what the problems are and how they should be fixed. Otherwise we are at risk of making people believe that they should have a problem with things that are a natural part of their culture and something that they are free to choose to do. We are also likely to only come up with solutions that fit into our world view of how something should look.

Community Justice personnel being prepared for an insight into Yolngu culture.

What I am presenting to you in the following is based on my perspective after 8 years of experience working with the Yolngu people of North East Arnhem Land, working in health and business education, using their local language and cultural concepts, through Why Warriors Pty Ltd. This is backed up by more than 35 years of historical knowledge from the region through my family, and work with Aboriginal Resource Development Services (ARDS). In this short presentation I use generalisations based on our experience with the Yolngu people of North East (NE) Arnhem Land, though we are confident from communication with Indigenous people elsewhere, that these factors apply to remote Indigenous communities across northern and central Australia. I focus on the needs of remote communities but believe that these points could also be applied, in slightly different ways, to regional and urban Australia.

It is important to always work from the root cause to find solutions. We need to work from an underlying theory about the problems facing Indigenous communities in order to bring consistency to our methods and so we can test and review where our theory or method fails us in practice. A reflection in theory about root causes is standard for good Community Development practice. Our view is that the primary underlining cause of virtually all issues facing Indigenous people in remote communities today (with historical influences in regional and urban areas) is a lack of effective communication between the Indigenous peoples and the Dominant Culture due to racial, cross-cultural and cross-language dynamics. The colonial invasion has created a new world around remote Indigenous people, but as a result they are marginalised from access to the information, and the knowledge they need to succeed in this new world of the Dominant Culture in Australia. The people are unable to obtain the necessary information because it is not made available to them in a form they can understand or interpret. Because of differences in language, symbology and world view, Indigenous cultural groups are unable to explore and test new knowledge from the Dominant Culture so that it can become part of their cultural knowledge base.

For example; where did you learn the basics of how to manage money loans, credit and debt? For most Dominant Culture people, it was through your parents, and later your peers. We usually adopt basic knowledge and behaviours regarding our use of finances through the teachings and demonstrations of our parents. The result is that today for those that are part of Australia’s mainstream culture, virtually without thinking you have a method for saving money, you know the importance of keeping the appropriate documents, you have an idea of how quickly interest can accumulate over time, and you are convinced of the need for regular payments to off-set interest on a loan. You know all this subconsciously. It is part of your cultural knowledge base, you do not have to relearn it regularly. When does a Yolngu person learn these things? They only really learn these things when they get a loan, or if they try to start a business, and they have to learn these things from scratch, and then consciously remember and, essentially, relearn these concepts daily to manage their monies in the mainstream system.

Let us consider this another way. You, as a person who has learnt the Dominant Culture, know subconsciously that there is a strong legal distinction between personal and business monies. This is because for the Dominant Culture corporate entities function separately from the family. What you don’t know is that for Yolngu, the corporate entity of trade in their culture is the clan. Rather than being a legal body separated from private life, clan corporate responsibilities include management of clan member’s birth, death, survival, and education, as well as trade and governance. Because of the Dominant Cultures ignorance about this, the mainstream system gives little allowance for business monies to be used in clan affairs, and this is just one reason why Yolngu entrepreneurs often bury themselves in debt.

As you can see there are massive knowledge gaps, on both sides (Indigenous and mainstream) but the ignorance that results has its greatest effect on Indigenous people, and their communities, because the Dominant Culture has control. Consequently, remote Indigenous people must struggle to stay healthy in a new western lifestyle, grapple with a foreign trade systems, and struggle to simply manage their life in a world controlled by the Dominant Culture. There are numerous examples; words such as, germs, and infection, or contract, and liability have no meaning, or completely the wrong meaning to many remote Indigenous people. These particular examples are words that embody concepts that must be understood in order to take medicines correctly and live hygienically in modern housing, or in regard to the latter these concepts are needed to manage finances and make business deals. Due to knowledge gaps remote Indigenous people live with uncertainty in dealing with the world the Dominant Culture has created around them. Lack of underlying knowledge results in a lack of control over their world. Many symptoms of community dysfunction flow from this. For example, when a Yolngu man attempts to better his world, it often becomes a stressful encounter, and therefore he may become susceptible to drug and alcohol abuse in an attempt to escape a world he cannot seem to master, due to a lack of knowledge he doesn’t even know he is missing.

There are huge gaps in peoples capacity to understand mainstream systems, diseases and laws… etc. This is not because of any difference in ability or intelligence but simply because it is not made available in an appropriate form. Consequently the ability of the Dominant Culture to communicate information or “educate” effectively is pivotal for community transformation. Thus the foundation to successful Community Development with Indigenous peoples lies in the quality of the Dominant Culture personnel who are placed in remote communities or in Indigenous affairs in general.

Dominant Culture Personnel are required to stand in the gap; the information, communication and education gap, in order to facilitate Indigenous people’s interaction with, and their learning about, the new world they face. To do this effectively these personnel need to be: 1. A certain quality of person. They need to have the right attitude and regard for humanity. This is the most important starting point for good communication and cross-cultural effectiveness. 2. Trained to know how to deal with the complex social, racial, linguistic and cultural environment they enter when serving Indigenous people. 3. Supported to stay in the community longer, to facilitate knowledge exchange between the cultures, and create continuity and stability.

While I am emphasising the importance of workers who come from the Dominant Culture, I must clarify that success in community development is always the result of the intellect, abilities, skills and persistence of the local people themselves. (I stress this does not mean the success of importing successful Indigenous individuals from elsewhere). Community development is only sustainable, and therefore only successful, when the potential, ideas and raw power (sweat) of the local people is unleashed. This cannot be contrived through any form of manipulation or coercion. Dominant culture personnel can facilitate this by working in cooperation, dialogue, and “solidarity” (as Paulo Friere would say) with the people. This requires personnel with a particular attitude and ideology. Dominant culture personnel must have an attitude of love toward the people and their potential over and above a desire to solve the social problems, or institute outsider ideas and values. Humility is also important, perceiving others as equals and not to think of yourself as the saviour of the poor Indigenous person. An attitude of superiority makes it impossible to act in a way that builds relationships and empowers others. The people will always recognise the hypocrisy in the actions of a person who attempts to empower but believes themselves superior. Personnel can be taught right attitudes to a degree, and personnel training must include a process of attitude formation. However, selfishly motivated people, or those with entrenched racial superiority complexes cannot succeed in community development. It is far easier to recruit people who are already able to view Indigenous people (and their culture and society) as their equals, then to change people with poor attitudes – for really only God can do that. Personnel should be recruited with the right attitudes. I suggest that strategies to help quality people discover their call to work with Indigenous communities and then enable them to take positions in communities, is possibly the first step to enabling positive change in Indigenous communities.

Presently Dominant Culture Personnel are starting work with Indigenous communities with little preparatory training. This is unusual in the global work place. Army officers going overseas get extensive briefing and training to cope with the new cultural and political situations they will be encountering. This is even more the case with personnel in Christian Mission, and Charity organisations; they spend months or years preparing in language, cross-cultural and development skills. Is it because Indigenous people live inside Australia that we do not take into account the language and cultural difficulties personnel will encounter? This is changing and most government organisations require basic cultural awareness training, but often this training is poorly founded in practice and consists of short and once off workshops. The training required for Dominant Culture Personnel as I have suggested, needs to cover; cross-cultural communication skills, the complex racial/cultural dynamics, along with ideological and methodological studies for community development. And lets not forget that in many remote communities, studies in the local Indigenous Language is essential if real knowledge exchange is to occur, and the communities potential to be unleashed.

Importantly, especially if we can encourage personnel who already have good attitudes, training need not be a huge bachelor degree or something of that sort, but more importantly it needs to be extensive ongoing training (eg regularly at 3 months, 6 months, 12months, 2 years). Community development is a practice of engaging with the community and then reflecting on how to do it better. Regular ongoing training helps this process. Ongoing training with personnel helps re-enforce what they have learnt. What we see from the 2 day courses we currently run is that personnel learn a lot but only retain a small amount. Once in the field they fall back into dominant culture assumptions under the pressures and stresses of their job. Returning to training at intervals gives them a break, refreshes their understanding and allows them to discover new things that can be applied directly and specifically to their job with the people.

Without quality recruitment, training and ongoing support, Dominant Culture personnel actually make the situation worse for Indigenous people, like the Yolngu people. This is mostly the situation today. Most Dominant Culture personnel who come to work on Indigenous communities today, are short term contractors or stay at most 1-3 years. Others fly in and out and reside in major centres, and thus have even less real availability to the Indigenous community and less real experience of local needs. The result is effectively development tourism. This creates instability for the local people , who are constantly attempting to manage new personnel. Furthermore, the temporary nature of personnel in Indigenous communities also prevents that passing on of corporate knowledge about effective development practice.

Dominant Culture personnel in communities today have little knowledge of what has or has not worked over the years, because of the constant replacement of personnel. The result is agencies continually repeat programs and policies that come out of “western” assumptions about how to fix the ‘problems’. Organisations continue to reintroduce the same old failures like feeding programs for children, an idea which perpetuates welfare dependencies in parents and children, and reduces parents sense of worth in their child’s life. Or forced English only education which was tried 3 years ago and dumped only to be taken up again more forcefully by the current NT labour government. The policy will lead to lower retention at grade 4-5 and poor literacy outcomes in high school students, not to mention the undermining of traditional knowledge. Our own corporate history over 35 years allows us to critic these ideas as rehashes, but this history also suggests that what works is trained personnel who stay on in community long term. We see evidence of this from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s in NE Arnhem Land where the Methodist missionaries required all their personnel to undertake language training and also later community development training. Although they also got many things wrong, these personnel helped create a situation where 90% of jobs in the community were being filled by local Yolngu. This is completely unlike the present conditions, where most jobs are filled by outsiders.

Personnel who stay on communities longer, acquire more effective skills in working with and relating to Indigenous people and they facilitate the exchange of useful information across the cultural gap by developing better relationships of trust with Indigenous people over time.

I believe there is a link between support, training, the quality and attitudes of personnel and the time personnel choose to stay on working with Indigenous people . The Methodist church had many people who stayed long term in community (>10 years). This was due to their love for the people but also I think because their training requirements meant they were skilled and equipped. (We also see long term personnel in other organisations today who practice either quality recruitment or train effectively eg. ARDS and ALPA) Personnel who can’t communicate well with Indigenous people and are unprepared for things like culture shock and horizontal violence, consequently suffer similar confusion and stress to what Yolngu feel in dealing with the unknown of the Dominant Culture. And so personnel stress out and leave. (At far as I am aware teachers can still receive up to 6 months paid stress leave after a stint in remote communities, but limited if any training is provided prior to arrival ). The Methodist missionaries also worked together with a common goal and could draw on each other and the larger church structures for support. Personnel when placed on community need support. People who have to rely on their own energy constantly to cope with stress cannot use that energy to empower others. They need to know who to go to when things get tough for help and advice. They need to be part of a larger team working for common ends – their success at serving Indigenous communities. They need follow up training and they need regular counselling support.

In summary, considering the information marginalisation of Indigenous peoples, community development in Indigenous communities requires as the first foundation, Dominant Culture personnel to stand in the information and communication gap. This is necessary not because Dominant Culture personnel make development happen, but to facilitate grass roots transformation by the local Indigenous people, through the abilities, sweat, intelligence and knowledge of the local people. In order to walk along side Indigenous people without usurping them Dominant Culture personnel must be recruited with appropriate attitudes. To build on this, personnel also require ongoing training to enable them to communicate and educate effectively, and to build strong relationships in the communities. Finally personnel require ongoing support to help them remain long term for stability and continuity of corporate knowledge.

I do believe that dedicated community development workers are required in communities, but it is also critical that those in government and non-government service roles are recruited, trained and supported appropriately to support true grass roots development,and to ensure local Indigenous people are empowered. In this way we could see a ground force of servants to community empowerment, standing in the information gap, and working together. That these basic foundations of recruiting, training and supporting personnel do not already exist is damaging, but implementing them is also the greatest opportunity for change in remote Indigenous communities.

See how Why Warriors works in this area with Arnhem Human Enterprise Development.