In search of an outstations policy for Indigenous Australians

The paper uses official secondary data to demonstrate that there is no compelling case for a policy change that would encourage recentralisation from small discrete Indigenous communities (outstations/homelands/emerging communities) to larger discrete Indigenous communities. Nor is there a compelling policy case for a move from outstations to townships or from townships to larger urban centres to improve Indigenous people's livelihood prospects. The paper suggests there is too little research and understanding of culturally distinct, but evolving, patterns of Indigenous mobility and migration in remote and very remote Australia, and a danger that policy-makers will fall into the trap of conceptualising Indigenous residence as occurring in some fixed hierarchy of settlements, rather than as occurring regionally and flexibly between larger and smaller communities and between smaller communities. There is a distinct possibility that government policy aspirations are out of touch with the aspiration of many Indigenous people to decentralise. While endorsing recent ministerial calls for an open debate on outstations, the point is made that much of this debate is being conducted with little input from outstations people themselves and with limited reference to expert local and regional knowledge; an federal Inquiry is suggested - that may find there are diverse futures for Indigenous people at outstations at variance with the monolithic mainstreaming perspective that appears to be dominating emerging policy discourse. Such futures might see Indigenous people living on the land they own, moving between larger and smaller communities, and pursuing livelihoods in a hybrid economy that includes payment for the delivery of environmental services, participation in the customary or non market sector, and the pursuit of commercial opportunities. Such non-mainstream possibilities need to be explored.