Being indigenous on one’s land is a ‘lifestyle choice: the BBC’s Marie McInerney’s ‘Australia’s remote indigenous communities fear closure’, 12/03/15 | settler colonial studies blog

Being indigenous on one’s land is a ‘lifestyle choice: the BBC’s Marie McInerney’s ‘Australia’s remote indigenous communities fear closure’, 12/03/15

14Mar15

Excerpt: Derby Aboriginal elder Lorna Hudson was a child when government authorities in the 1960s moved her people from tiny Sunday Island off the remote north-west coast of Western Australia to the mainland.

For a time most of the Sunday Island “saltwater” people lived on a reserve in the outback town of Derby, recalls Ms Hudson.

Later many moved to the coastal community of One Arm Point, 200km north of the resort town of Broome, where they resumed traditional hunting and fishing.

Their dislocation is an experience shared by many Indigenous Australians who were forced off their land, last century, either because of changes in government policy or lack of employment.

“That’s how people lost their culture,” says Ms Hudson. “It put us in a different environment, away from our country.”

In the wake of plans by the West Australian government to close many small indigenous communities, the people of One Arm Point and other remote indigenous communities fear history might soon be repeated.

Comments earlier this week by Prime Minister Tony Abbott that people had made a “lifestyle choice” to live in these communities have intensified local fears people will be forced out of their homes, many of which are on ancestral land.

Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett last year announced that up to 150 of the state’s estimated 250 remote indigenous communities might be closed.

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