Linking Culture and the Environment

A. Trau and R. Bushell 273
community were very similar to that of the stakeholders included in the
Gunya Story. One community leader and joint management committee member
pointed out that ‘that’s 5 years down the line, but that’s our goal you
know’ and it will take commitment, hard work and continual support for the
community. ‘When people are getting down you gotta say “come on let’s get
up, let’s do this properly” and it’ll keep going.’ Another, quoted below, spoke
of the determination and spirit of the Titjikala community:
We try our heart out. This is the first time we’re doing it and what I’m seeing
with my own eyes . . . I’m very impressed considering these people are illiterate;
half of them are illiterate people. But they can tell you the dreamtime stories,
they can tell you how to cook a kangaroo, how to get the witchetty grubs, you
know things like that. So they’re not backwards in that area but they’re slow
in numeracy and literacy. But you get ‘em out in the scrub where they’re doing
their work, they can leave you for dead. They can walk you to a water hole
you’ve never seen before and you wouldn’t even know how to get there. That’s
the best part of this place, they know where everything is. They’ve
been here all their life. You people only learning.
Some in the community even contemplated branching out from Gunya
Titjikala into other livelihood activities, confirming Zeppels’ (1999) assertion
that ‘diversified indigenous tourism’ is increasingly identified as an important
and useful means of wealth creation in remote indigenous Australian
communities. In case studies from South Africa (Mahony and Van Zyl, 2001;
Spenceley and Seif, 2003) and Kenya (Kareithi, 2003) livelihood diversification
reduced vulnerability to stresses and shocks within the tourism industry and
was therefore identified as an imperative for basic survival in many rural
and remote communities. Considering the comparable geographic isolation
and socio-economic disadvantage of remote indigenous Australian communities,
these findings give further motive for the Titjikala Aboriginal community
to branch out from Gunya Titjikala in the future.
Speaking from their 2 years of experience with Gunya Titjikala, the
Titjikala community also had several insightful recommendations for other
communities in Australia and around the world seeking to establish and
operate a tourism enterprise. Most important was the need to tailor the business
to the specific needs of each and every community. This is a process that
a community interviewee explained must involve ‘kids, grandfathers, everyone
you know’ and determine the community’s vision and goals. To achieve
such collective outcomes, many in the community agreed it was vital that
personal or family conflicts are put aside and outside stakeholders must continually
adapt to the community’s needs and wants:
I can talk to tourists now. I used to be really shy and after next one and next one
you know I was really keen to talk and everyone would listen. Now I feel really
good to talk. They ask us and we tell them. We can get really strong – I feel really
strong when tourists come to talk. I’m all keened up to talk and I’m strong.
While this case study is in the early stages it serves to demonstrate a number
of key issues within the PPT model of indigenous tourism development that
resonate worldwide.