Indigenous Community Engagement: Experiences of Rural Community Empowerment in the Rangelands Region of Southern Australia

Marin P¹*, Dessart B¹*

1. Rural Solutions, Primary Industries and Resources, Port Augusta, South Australia, Australia

Rural Solutions SA has been working with Indigenous Communities and groups across South Australia on a holistic planning process. The outcome of this is a community ‘plan’ for long term sustainability, which considers social, environmental, economic and cultural impacts, and most importantly, is determined by the community.

The process enables communities and groups to be much more directive in their dealings with government and non-government agencies, from a basis of sound decision making that is wholly owned by the community as the decision makers. The current situation of disparate, disconnected interaction between such service providers and the community and mismatched goals and agendas is thus redressed.

Participants are encouraged to view their situation as a continuum and to plot their current and preferred futures. Requirements for training and development naturally fall out of such a process and support the vision for development of the community rather than what tends to happen currently, where training often occurs in complete isolation of any planning by the community. Often the outcome of training isolated from community development is highly trained people with technical skills but with no real job prospects or potential to use the skills in the community because there is no appropriate enterprise or infrastructure to support a suitable enterprise.

Our presentation will discuss our developmental experiences of working with Indigenous Communities in the Rangelands region of southern Australia, and examine the feedback we have received. We will present an interactive case study in support of effective engagement of Indigenous communities with agencies and service providers.