User:JohnHarmonPrice/sandbox JHP

Ongoing Challenges

Utopia presents a fascinating instance of the set of problems, challenges and achievements that are entailed in the long search for a just integration of remote indigenous people into the Australian community. Its 30 year history is a record of 'self-determination' on a background of well developed communal will, strong participation, and an experience during the era of settlement which included some profitable relations with white pastoralists and some degree of continuous occupation. It's success, in mitigating the clinical disorders associated with transition to sedentary life, and minimising the advent of destructive behaviours and intoxicants; in maintaining a strong commitment to traditional practices and customs, and the ever present interest in the issue of identity in the face of coercive change, are impressive. Even so, the future of Utopia and places like it is problematic; the notion of integration itself the subject of contention; self determination is only effective inside a sphere of dependency that brings with it a plethora of social and political consequences. To many observers, the outstanding deficiency in remote communities is education, which provides its beneficiaries with capacities for choosing the terms of their own integration. It is of course, also a powerful integrative force itself, and so shifts the issue of cultural identity. The tensions due to these inevitable dilemmas are present at Utopia. The community is however in an unusually good position to resolve them, given time and a sympathetic administration.