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Sherwood, Juanita --- "Community: What Is It?" [1999] IndigLawB 21; (1999) 4(19) Indigenous Law Bulletin 4


Community: What is it?

by Juanita Sherwood.

Recently, I was working on a government project that had enlisted a working party of Indigenous people. This working party consisted of a valuable range of people who had a great deal of expertise in the area. As this strategy was targeting Aboriginal communities in New South Wales, we utilised language and terminology that we believed would be meaningful to those communities. The community expertise and the manner in which the strategy was expressed were, we believed, necessary for the development of an effective state-wide strategy.

However, the government department funding the strategy decided that it was really they who held the expertise and in their wisdom proceeded to discount and invalidate the information and means of expression used by the working party, which had taken two years to develop. We had all wasted our valuable time and energy on a strategy that would no longer be from the community to the community.

Not long after this experience, a non-Indigenous work colleague asked me what I meant when I said community. I had assumed that community was a fairly obvious term; it is a term that Indigenous people use fairly regularly to explain where they are from and the status of that culture. The realisation of the lack of comprehension by non-Indigenous people regarding the term community does help me understand that perhaps the paternalism of bureaucrats and bureaucracies may not be an act of outright elitism, but simply an act of ignorance.

It is, therefore, important that I provide you with a notion of community – not only to enhance understanding and commitment to social justice in this country – but to promote an understanding of what community development is, and its relationship to community management and Indigenous self-determination.

Defining Community through Community Development

Up until now, non-Indigenous models of community development have been forced upon us by non-Indigenous community development workers. These community workers have promoted and achieved nothing more than setting up disenfranchised communities of dependents. We as a people have not been encouraged to develop our skills in community development, and as a result have not been in a position to provide vehicles for community development which government agencies may fund.

An Indigenous paradigm for community development my be defined as: working with communities to assist their members to find plausible solutions to the problems they have identified.[i] This must be conducted in an environment that advocates full and active participation of all community members in order that we understand and own skills to develop culturally appropriate programs/projects and services for our communities.

This is a traditional process that Indigenous people in Australia have participated in for thousands of years.[ii] It is a skill-based process that requires patience and perseverance.

Respect for individual contributions to this process is intrinsic to the development of a successful model for community management and its formulation of self-defined notions of community and community identity. Expressing this respect may entail any or all of the following:

This process is culturally appropriate as it directly relates to the intricate framework of our culture. It was passed on through the Dreaming and has been practiced effectively for generations for the continuation of our culture. Our present kinship and community bases and family are living examples of this culture.

Traditional and Contemporary Elements of Indigenous Community

The cultural formation of Indigenous communities is based upon the framework of the Dreaming. The Dreaming explains our creation and the deep and connected relationships between the land and all living creatures of this country. Our Mother is the earth who provides us with the nutrients essential for life and it is through acts of reciprocity with her that our culture and the lores that govern our social norms and relationships.

The Dreaming provides a framework from which the key attributes of our cultures are derived. For instance, the notion that secular and spiritual development are interconnected and the principle of cooperative relationships between all individuals.

Invasion has been a time of much destruction and spiritual anguish. Now is the time for us to work together to develop solutions for our communities’ problems, so that we may achieve self-determination and true social justice in this country. Working together for each other is an attribute that I believe is one of the most significant aspects of our community and culture. It provides us with a viewpoint to observe the distinct differences between our consciousness of community and the current western ideology of society.

We were, for instance, a communal culture due to the frameworks that benefited all within the community. The introduction of capitalism by the invaders resulted in a halt to the effectiveness of these cultural structures by imposing abstract and awkward philosophies upon us in order that we survive. It is quite obvious to Indigenous people that these frameworks have resulted in the factionalisation of our cultural structures and communities. It has been a subtle form of genocide that has enhanced an infrastructure of co-dependency. Public servants need us to pick up their paychecks every week, and we need them because they have money for our most rudimentary needs.

However, we are a strong people and have managed to survive the last two hundred and ten years by grasping onto strands of our culture that have survived the assimilation process. Our strength and our culture has been passed to us by our Elders, who have provided us access to lore and traditional knowledge that they have been able to maintain through acts of bravery. Their acts remain relevant to us today.

Elders of communities are and were the walking encyclopaedias of all things relative to the world and humankind. They were the enforcers of lore as well as the academics and teachers; their authority was paramount to the sustainability of their community and the well-being of the earth. It is up to each Indigenous individual to accept personal responsibility to take up the knowledge that pours freely from our Elders’ hearts and mouths. The people of our nation have been devastated by the disempowerment that has driven forks into our ability to accept our knowledge as meaningful and worthwhile.

Notions of identity, connection, respect and family provide us with a current reality of how community from an Indigenous perspective is viewed today. I believe each Indigenous person in Australia has a definition of what community means to him or her. Mine is of course subjective and has developed through my ability to access the support of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It has also evolved through following my heart and not the many texts that I have had to delve into over the last twenty years. It has come about through trusting the essence of my culture and those Elders I hold in esteem.

In addition to the paternalistic attitude that government bureaucracies and agencies know what’s best for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, is the notion that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are all the same. State-wide and nationally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been obliged, as a matter of utmost need, to accept funding under inappropriate directives that do not acknowledge the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and people.

We are a diverse nation. Until two hundred and ten years ago, we managed diversity and community need in an extremely effective manner. Our subsequent experiences of invasion, dispossession and colonisation are equally diverse. Solutions to the problems arising from colonisation will also be diverse and need to be acknowledged as such.

However, in my experience, the notion of ‘community consultation’ – a term liberally scattered through government policies – is simply rhetoric. The reason for invasion and the enormous migration to this country, initially from England, was as a direct result of poor community management and self-determination. To achieve social justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, it is essential that government agencies endorse and enable self-determination in relation to Indigenous-driven development of communities. If it is imperative that we as Indigenous people to approach our Elders with respect because they are the link to our cultural knowledge, so must the bureaucracy.

Juanita Sherwood is an Indigenous woman who has lectured in community development at the University of Sydney.


[i] This is my own definition. Cf Hazelhurst, K.M. A Healing Place: Indigenous Visions for Personal Empowerment and Community Recovery, (Central Queensland University Press, Rockhampton, 1994). Cf Ufem H, Community Development: Creating community alternatives – vision, analysis and practice, (Addison Wesley Longman Australia Pty Ltd, 1995).

[ii] See Edwards, W.H (ed.) Traditional Aboriginal Society (The Macmillan Company of Australia, South Melbourne, 1987).

[iii] Costello, Con Goo, Cohen, Duval, Gibbs, Kelaher, Kelly, .Marshall, Sherwood, Tabuai & Wnsor, Indigenous Management Model (1998), forthcoming.


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