The purpose of this assignment is to – Define Community

Introduction

Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander community

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Date – xx/xx/xxxx

Table of Contents

Introduction. 3

Background of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. 3

Realistically achievable goal identified by the Indigenous Community. 5

Strategies adopted to achieve community goals among Indigenous people. 5

Conclusion. 7

References. 8

Introduction

Community is not any place, building or any type of organisation or information, but is a feeling or set of relationships among individuals to meet common needs. The members of any community have to have a sense of trust, safety, belonging and care for each other. It has become more critical for the need for better understanding of the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities functioning if the life expectancy gap of the Australian non-indigenous and indigenous people has to be closed down(Hammill, 2014). This gap in life expectancy has been a grave emotional and social barrier for the wellbeing of the indigenous communities. This essay depicts a community development approach through a community of interest approach where the motive as a community development worker would be to narrow down the scope of focus and exchange information on how the indigenous or the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities could be brought together with the non-indigenous population of Australia through community-based loose coupling techniques.

Background of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community

The Aborigines and the Torres Strait Islander are the two traditional inhabitants of the continent of Australia before colonisation. The communities are ethnically and culturally very different as the geographical locations of the communities were also varied. The Aborigines had lived on mainland Australia, Tasmania and the group of islands offshore the continent. The aboriginal people comprised of diverse aboriginal provinces and had their traditions and language. The Torres Strait Islander peoples were the inhabitants of the islands in the Torres Strait which are situated between the Papua New Guinea and the Tip of Cape York in the province of Queensland. These communities had been living in the continents thousands of years before the inquisition of the non-indigenous population in the continent of Australia. The indigenous Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders had evolved to suit their social, spiritual and cultural lifestyle according to the physical environment of the continent of Australia(Biddle &Prout, 2014).

Some of the aboriginal communities are more transient due to the shortage of food supplies in deserts of Australia and they were more of a nomadic community due to the belief that their land was created from the journeys of their ancestors. The spirituality and the culture of the aboriginals held more value to them as it had shaped the structures of their life as well as the relation between the sexes. This made aboriginals more spiritually connected to their land, air, water and everything that grows or exists on it, which made them more connected or rather beholden to their land without considering themselves as the owner of the land in the European sense.

The Torres Strait Islander people’s culture is more of an oral culture who had passed down knowledge, information and stories passed down verbally down their generations. They were mainly agriculturists, fishermen and hunters who also associated their culture and community with the sea, land and sky have interwoven into their spiritual beliefs.

As the aboriginal and the Torres Strait islanders considered holistic knowledge as unified world view where land doesn’t only means something which is considered for utilitarian purposes, but for the indigenous people it has tremendous spiritual significance. The definitions of kinship, family, the community are very different for the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as they connect it to spirituality which is a fundamental yet complex definition of community for them. Like all other communities the indigenous people have also settled in urban communities from the remote communities, but their values and obligations towards shared care of relatives, children and family are still very significant to them. The indigenous people consider family and extended family too at the core of their interpretation of community. In general, communities are bound by geographical boundaries and includes social interaction between the peoples living within the same community, but in the case of the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the family relations and the kinship would not be confined to a geographical territory, but they would still be a community(Barney, 2016). The understanding of community may vary vastly among the indigenous people as even if signs or variables of the community are found in a certain indigenous setting, it may not be a community setting for the indigenous people at all. Therefore it is important to connect with the indigenous people on the level of community building without considering the aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islanders a homogenous community, as both of them have their differences in community cohesion, affairs and rituals. Therefore it is important as a community developer to try to understand the community as it is and let the indigenous people themselves identify and decide what constitutes as the community and what its functions mean.

Realistically achievable goal identified by the Indigenous Community

The community functioning in indigenous people, whether they are aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, it has been found to clash very often with places and geographic territory. One of the main reasons why indigenous communities have problems belonging to certain communities is due to lack of inclusiveness that they feel with the non-indigenous as well as the indigenous people too. There has been a social cohesion between the indigenous people and tribes. As before colonialism the whole continent of Australia was divided into smaller aboriginal countries, therefore often when aborigines or Torres Strait Islander people were forcefully relocated, they lacked the sense of belonging even after being relocated with a community of indigenous peoples. This has been supported in the literature of forcible relocation by researchers (Campbell et al., 2018) as the nexus of community identity and place is troubling for indigenous people.

It is the goal of achieving inclusiveness among their community as well as with the non-indigenous people is what the indigenous community has been trying to achieve various community programs. It is possible as in works of literature (Gwynne & Lincoln, 2017) regarding the place-based concept of community among the Australian indigenous people, it has been found that in instances of extinguishing of the land-based community too, indigenous people have come across united when the sense of community arose from forcibly brought together groups through participation and inclusiveness in cultural, and family programs.

Strategies adopted to achieve community goals among Indigenous people

There are various community development programs presently which have been involving the indigenous community elders and leaders to manage the community development initiatives in the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. There have been several community development programs also conducted in the past which have been more or less unsuccessful. But these past researches (Hernandez, 2013)have helped in understanding and making better strategies which would help the community development workers to develop some key strategies which would act as a guide to develop better indigenous community development programs. Most of these critical factors involved empowering the indigenous community leaders and community development workers from the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community to make informed community development decisions for themselves rather than being made by the non-indigenous people.

The first key empowering factor to support the effective indigenous community workers and community-based programs which have been analysed through previous researches(McRae-Williams et al., 2018) on indigenous community-based programs have shown to transfer control and ownership of programs to the indigenous leaders, elders and community workers. The community ownership defines authority as well as autonomy over the programs which helps to gain the enthusiasm and commitment of the indigenous community leaders, workers and also the collaborators by building community capacity which helps the indigenous community to address their own needs of community development.

Another strategy which has proved to work in community development approaches for indigenous communities through earlier researches(Sanders, 2010) was embedding positive cultural perceptions especially in children based programs. These programs help to heal the intergenerational trauma that the indigenous people have been suffering through generations at the hands of the non-indigenous people of Australia. One of the best methods of embedding positive cultural influences is the adoption of a safe cultural environment which emphasis on the holistic and spiritual world view of the indigenous people that stresses on the importance to their family and land.

Earlier researches (Stephens et al., 2013)on the indigenous population have proved the employment of the local indigenous workers in all community development programs, be it regarding the indigenous people or not to be fruitful in reducing the cultural tension between the indigenous and non-indigenous communities. In several community development programs mentioned in researches where the local workers had been extremely supportive for programs of indigenous groups living in extremely remote locations and speaking rare languages like that of Gapuwiyak indigenous community development program. The local indigenous workers also act as community leaders who help to communicate the goals of the programs to the indigenous community members as they can better align themselves with goals of the program and belief system of the community of the indigenous.

It is imperative to the strategies of community building to create a good governance structure which has been established as important constituents of community building in the early researches(Williams et al., 2016). The good governance structure of indigenous communities helps in making it more sustainable. A good governance structure of the community development programs means to create processes, structures and institutional capacity for exercising the required strategies to make the programs successful. Good governance in indigenous community-building programs means representation, accountability and sound decision making by the indigenous as well as the non-indigenous community workers and collaborators. The good governance strategy has enabled the indigenous communities in achieving better cultural fit between the organisational traditions as well as the community customs and values.

The bottom-up approach of development in community development is very important for holistic communities such as that of the indigenous communities in Australia. The bottom-up approach conforms to the indigenous people’s decisions and authority of empowerment as they would be largely affected by the decisions and not the non-indigenous peoples, therefore they should have the power to influence the decisions that would be taken in community development programs(Gwynne & Lincoln, 2017). This would help in prioritising the strong connection of the indigenous people with their land, sea, environment, culture and family which is key to their spirituality. This will help in self-mobilisation and ownership of the indigenous communities about their future and will help in developing successful community development programs.

Conclusion

This paper had been a study about the aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islanders history and meaning of community for them and how any community development program could be developed for the welfare of the community of the indigenous. This paper has referred to the earlier researches which have shown various ways and strategies of community development programs as well as guided the organisations how to control the developmental programs without colliding with the empowerment and authority provided to the workers and leaders of the indigenous community. Although the lack of in-depth analysis is absent in the paper therefore long term research data is needed for in-depth assessment of the development of indigenous community developmental programs.

References

Barney, K. (2016). Listening to and learning from the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to facilitate success. Student Success, 7(1), 1.

Biddle, N., &Prout, S. (2014). Recent Change in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population and Housing Geographies. Geographical Research, 52(2), 133-145.

Campbell, M., Hunt, J., Scrimgeour, D., Davey, M., & Jones, V. (2018). Contribution of Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Services to improving Aboriginal health: an evidence review. Australian Health Review, 42(2), 218.

Gwynne, K., & Lincoln, M. (2017). Developing the rural health workforce to improve Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health outcomes: a systematic review. Australian Health Review, 41(2), 234.

Hammill, J. (2014). The Culture of Masculinity in an Australian Indigenous Community. Development, 68(4), 25-30.

Hernandez, G. (2013). Indigenous Perspectives on Community Economic Development: A North-South Conversation. Canadian Journal ofNonprofitand Social Economy Research, 4(1).

McRae-Williams, E., Yamaguchi, J., Wilson, B., Schultz, R., Abbott, T., &Cairney, S. (2018). Interplay Wellbeing Framework: Community Perspectives on Working Together for Effective Service Delivery in Remote Aboriginal Communities. International Indigenous Policy Journal, 9(1).

Sanders, W. (2010). Ideology, Evidence and Competing Principles in Australian Indigenous Affairs: From Brough to Rudd via Pearson and the NTER. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 45(3), 307-331.

Stephens, A., Baird, L., &Tsey, K. (2013). Australian Indigenous community development: making the link between community development training and community development practice. Community Development, 44(3), 277-291.

Williams, K., Berthelsen, D., Viviani, M., & Nicholson, J. (2016). Participation of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in a parent support programme: longitudinal associations between playgroup attendance and child, parent and community outcomes. Child: Care, Health and Development, 43(3), 441-450.