Employment in Ngukurr: values and concepts of work
Eva McRae-Williams
Charles Darwin University
Contact Email:   Eva.McRae-Williamscdu.edu.au

This paper draws on ethnographic data gathered through participant observation between June and September, 2006, and February and March, 2007, in Ngukurr; a remote Aboriginal community in South East Arnhem Land. This paper suggests that CDEP, as the primary industry in Ngukurr, has provided the context in which Aboriginal people, define, understand and value ‘work’. Non-Aboriginal perceptions and tensions associated with this program in Ngukurr are briefly discussed. The paper then concentrates on the Aboriginal experience of CDEP.

Drawing on these findings, this paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of a ‘social career’ for the younger generation of ‘workers’. Social career path means in this context the manipulation of obligations, negotiations and expectations of kin. This is an all consuming preoccupation and substitutes for notions of the western work ethic by creating meaning, direction and purpose in life. Adoption of a social career rather than a Western work career is encouraged inadvertently by the way in which the ‘work ethic’ is applied in remote communities. While CDEP is the framework in which the ‘social career’ phenomenon has developed, its construction has also been influenced by both traditional Aboriginal culture and contemporary relations between Aboriginal people and mainstream Australian society.

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