Published works

Getting smart and planning what to do during hazards is something the community want to start doing for themselves. Stories about the response to cyclone Lam testify to some of the challenges and issues that the community members feel could be addressed if the community is directly involved in planning for safety. There is much interest among the communities to be involved which is not yet harnessed to the formal process. Within this there is a need to redefine the way the government sees community and underline the importance of recognizing the multiple layering of groups and interests in communities such as Ramingining and Galinwin’ku.

Planning capacity exists in remote communities and there is abundant evidence on display on how complex the planning arrangements are. These plans draw on complex and often detailed ecological knowledge that exists among the relevant groups and individuals who have so far been left out of the planning process. Our big question in the project is how do we make this existing skills and knowledge visible and useful in the current government facilitated hazard response frameworks.

Equally, local authority and decision-making structures exist in contemporary/customary life. These are evident in ceremony of course but ‘required’ and expected by Yolngu/bininj to guide and support all facets of life. Significant erosion of cultural power and authority are at the heart of many community issues and the extant capacity to re-engage this authority is both complex (in its interactions with other entrenched layers of governance) and almost invisible to the outside observer (including most government agents).

To achieve the kind of collaboration required for the community to be meaningfully involved, government must accommodate calls to open up spaces for engagement. A community driven plan developed with the community provides a framework that highlights those areas of action where there is room for possible for collaboration and areas where there are opportunities for complementarity. A plan that brings together the government and the community is not yet feasible in the way communities are developing it, how do we turn current models on their heads and get government to see and try the ‘community way’? These complementary projects at Ramingining and Galiwin’ku are taking a ‘bottom up’ approach to establishing new grounds for more effective engagement.