Statistics for Community Governance: The Yawuru Indigenous Population Survey, Western Australia

Abstract

This article presents a case study of an exercise in Aboriginal community governance in Australia. It sets out the background events that led the Yawuru Native Title Holders Aboriginal Corporation in the town of Broome on Australia’s northwest coast to secure information for its own needs as an act of self-determination and essential governance, and it presents some of the key findings from that exercise. As the Indigenous rights agenda shifts from the pursuit of restitution to the management and implementation of benefits, those with proprietary rights are finding it increasingly necessary to build internal capacity for post-native title governance and community planning, including in the area of information retrieval and application. As an incorporated land-holding group, the Yawuru people of Broome are amongst the first in Australia to move in this area of information gathering, certainly in terms of the degree of local control, participation, and conceptual thinking around the logistics and rationale for such an exercise. An innovative addition has been the incorporation of survey output data into a Geographic Information System to provide for spatial analysis and a decision support mechanism for local community planning. In launching and administering the "Knowing our Community" household survey in Broome, the Yawuru have set a precedent in the acquisition and application of demographic information for internal planning and community development in the post-native title determination era.

Data sovereignty for the Yawuru in Western Australia

“…In addressing the need to negotiate with multiple stakeholders under multiple pressures, Yawuru embarked on a project to build knowledge around their country, community and stories in an effort to 'be at the table' with information for negotiation rather than at the margins receiving information. The beginning of that knowledge project was identifying the availability and scope of data to contribute to Yawuru's knowledge base and decision-making processes (Taylor et al 2014). Despite the wealth of data available on the Indigenous population of Australia, the usefulness of those datasets for Yawuru's purposes 3…”

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enumeration and engagement strategies: challenges and future options

“…Additionally, the literature indicates that outputs from data collections such as the Australian Census and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS) do not meet community needs for localised data. Analysts attribute this to data being aggregated at national or state levels (Yu 2011: 2;Taylor et al 2012) and to problems with the existing ' Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population' demographic (Biddle & Wilson 2013: 107). Analysts suggest addressing the demographic issues by applying consistent parameters across collections and by recognising groups within the broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population such as native title holders (Taylor 2009: 125;Taylor et al 2012: 28).…”

Indigenous Data Sovereignty

“…Some groups-both domestically and internationally-have turned to their own approaches in progressing what NSOs have been unable to do (Taylor et al 2012;Nguyen & Cairney 2013). With this movement has come the assertion of data sovereignty (FNIGC 2007).…”