Transcending hunter gatherer pursuits while balancing customary cultural ideals with market forces of advanced western societies: Extending the traditional boundaries of Indigenous Yolngu people of the Northern Territory of Australia

Abstract

Management for a decade. His vocational background has been in teaching, engineering as well as academia, and he has published in the fields of education, engineering and management. Sandra Daff was recently awarded the Graduate Certificate in Community Relations by the University of Queensland. Her vocational career began in the Western Australian Government Water Corporation. Later, in the Alcan Department of Community Services she designed and administered the inaugural ALERT Indigenous educational vocational initiative at Nhulunbuy, and has continued to provide leadership for the management and coordination of the programme. Sandra has been involved in a series of publications reporting outcomes of the ALERT initiative.

Shaping Sustainable Employment and Social Consequences of Indigenous Australians in a Remote Region

“…often find ways to maintain their links to families, communities, and homelands by going "home" for ceremonies and/or practicing their ceremonial life in the cities" [29] (p. 152). In contrast, Indigenous Australians residing in remote areas, particularly the Yolngu people, are likely to be engaged in a fundamentally different lifestyle that endorses hunter-gatherer pursuits and actively practicing traditional ceremonial obligations [3,30,31]. Indeed, it is not uncommon to observe a single family or small group of adults, children, and dogs practicing a nomadic lifestyle (referred to as long grassing), in which they seldom emerge from the bush into precincts of a town or remote community.…”

“…To facilitate Indigenous people being employed in mining related jobs, the ALERT VET program, commissioned by the resident mining corporation, was designed and installed on the Gove Peninsula. Knowing the extent of the English literacy and numeracy deficits of the local Yolngu people, six activity items were created that did not require literate or numerate skills to assess 18 aptitudes and thus rank the applicants' work potential [31]. This instrument attracted the label Discovery and was constructed from the theoretical contribution of the eminent American E.E.…”