Bulletin

Issue: June 2004

News

What makes an Aboriginal business work?

What makes an Aboriginal business enterprise work - particularly in remote areas like Cape York Peninsula' La Trobe University recently conducted an Aboriginal Tourism Symposium that sought answers to this question.

The School of Tourism and Hospitality welcomed an Aboriginal elder and tourism entrepreneur, Mr Wilfred Gordon, to the symposium which attracted people involved in Indigenous affairs and the tourism industry.

Ms Judy Bennett, a PhD scholar in Tourism and Hospitality, says much has been written on the barriers to enterprise development in remote Aboriginal communities, but it is rare to find examples of how these barriers can be overcome.

Mr Gordon and Ms Bennett provided a glimpse of the realities of life in a remote Cape York Aboriginal community, and explained why the Government's focus on developing Indigenous enterprises - rather than the Indigenous entrepreneur - has met with such limited success.

Mr Gordon is a Nugal-warra Elder from Hope Vale Aboriginal Community, and Ms Bennett has been helping to foster Indigenous entrepreneurship in Cape York for two years.

With 25 years in the tourism industry, principally with her own businesses, Ms Bennett responded to a request to help the Hope Vale community where for more than a decade various clans and family groups had been talking about tourism, but no business had eventuated.

They worked together to develop Mr Gordon's business, Guurrbi Tours, launched in May last year. Since then they have been asked to present their findings on 'what worked' to a variety of interested bodies.

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