Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2015
In northern Australia Aboriginal ‘settlements’ or communities are, in the main, the product of a variety of west-centric priorities, the needs, for example of missionaries to keep prospective converts conveniently at hand to maintain the pressure of the Christian conversion process or for government agencies to distribute welfare from single accessible locations. The establishment of fixed communities usually brought considerable advantage and power to those mainstream organisations which established them. However, along with some obvious physical benefits for the local people, such as improved access to some of the accruals of west-centric technology and welfare, came a variety of hazards and obstacles to the maintenance of a lifestyle with which local people felt secure and confident.