The concept of ‘community’ also needs careful examination in the context of CDEP. The term is widely used both by government and by Indigenous people and their organisations. Indigenous individuals and organisations will legitimate their position by reference to being community based. Equally, governments seek what they term ‘community support’ for their policies, and will legitimate policy changes in terms of this supposed support. However, Indigenous communities are highly complex and internally differentiated (see Frances Peters-Little, Ch. 19, this volume). Their existence as communities of interest is constituted largely in relation to the outside world. Their populations are differentiated in terms of the factors which continue to inform Indigenous political, social and economic relations—connections with ancestral lands and language, personal and group histories, ethnicity, and bearing on all of these, family and other local group affiliations.

Above all else, a fundamental component of Indigenous societies across Australia is the ‘family’. Indigenous families however are not to be understood as merely ‘extended’ versions of non-Indigenous families. They are based on principles, in particular that of descent, which demonstrate direct continuity with the land-holding structures of pre-colonial Indigenous societies. They form the basic political, social and economic units of contemporary Indigenous society. Indigenous people typically do not operate in terms of their ‘community’; rather, their place in the Indigenous world, and their responses to the non-Indigenous society, are established through their place as a member of their particular family (Sutton 1998: 55ff).

This has important implications for the implementation of the CDEP scheme. It has been argued throughout this paper that the CDEP scheme should take account of, rather than deny, the reality and validity of Indigenous values and practices. If Indigenous families form basic units of economic and social action, then it is important that this be taken into account, as far as possible, in the implementation of CDEP schemes.

What could this mean in practice? From the perspective of government, and of ATSIC, it is simply not feasible to fund a whole host of family-based CDEP schemes. Nor is it desirable from the Indigenous point of view; for one thing, small schemes would just not be administratively or logistically viable, as can be seen from the failure of many of the small Indigenous housing associations. Funding agencies need administratively competent, viable, CDEP organisations with the economies of scale and the ability to attract the necessary skilled staff.

Yet, within these organisations there is the capacity to plan and implement the allocation of resources, work programs, and other activities in such a way that autonomy and control at the local group level is facilitated. There are many ways in which this is already being done within CDEP schemes across Australia. Work gangs can be based on families or kin groups. Centrally administered regional CDEP schemes can allow for local residential communities to have effective control of their own work programs (see Gray & Thacker, Ch. 15 and Madden, Ch. 18 in this volume for cases in point). Even mechanisms for budgeting, program delivery and financial accounting can be developed so as to maximise control by relevant local groups, within an overall strategic direction set by the organisation as a whole. New technologies, including the Internet and accounting software, can be important tools in assisting the CDEP scheme to be accountable to, and maximise the control of, such local groups, as can more effective and accountable organisational structures.

An analogy—although it speaks to saltwater, rather than inland people—is that a CDEP scheme which gives maximum autonomy to its constituent families or other relevant sub-groups can be likened to a large jellyfish. From above, the jellyfish appears solid and bounded. Underneath, however, are myriad tentacles, each feeding and existing almost independently of the others.

Thus the community to which a CDEP scheme relates is not just an aggregation of individuals, as the non-Indigenous welfare policies would have it. Nor is it an undifferentiated entity. Rather, it is comprised of ‘family’ or other relevant sub-groupings which reflect basic Indigenously defined structures. It is these Indigenous groupings which should be the primary focus of CDEP, and of Indigenous welfare policy more generally.