Work is sacred ‐ the journey out of welfare

Abstract

This paper is about an extended Ngarinyin/Bunuba family in the West Kimberley in Australia whose forebears participated in the transition from gatherer ‐ hunter to pastoral worker. The senior members of the family experienced first hand the consequences of the introduction of the Pastoral Award in the late 1960s and the replacement of meaningful work with welfare dependency and the culture of alcohol. It is an evolving journey of a non‐literate community leader's struggle to organise out of chaos in order to generate and sustain social and economic practices that are consistent with life, and will produce a generation of young people able to protect country and reproduce traditional culture. The process for the senior members of the group is the renewal of the ethic of socially useful activity, and simultaneous disengagement from economic subjugation and despair born of futile dependence on welfare. For the younger members, it is the discovery of socially useful activity and the experience of the fulfilment that it can bring. The Journey out of Welfare is premised on the centrality of meaningful work to the development and maintenance of productive and enduring human relations. Work that reflects and sustains strong social bonds and stimulates intellectual and spiritual development in the course of meeting the daily and longer term material conditions for a healthy and happy life.