“I sort of sit on top of a cliff so I can see over to the water; it’s like I have a big oyster reef in my backyard,” Sandra Asa, a resident in Mapoon, northwest Queensland, told the Koori Mail. “I want this home. I’m going to do whatever it takes to actually own my own home, so I’m prepared for the commitment.”

Considerable media attention was drawn to World Vision’s Mapoon Home Ownership Project when Tim Costello visited the community in September 2009. However, the aspirations of Mapoon residents to own their own homes have been frustrated by the complexities of communal land ownership and the financial challenges of remote living.

Sandra’s personal connection to the land highlights Mapoon’s complicated history. In 1963, her family was forced to move to another settlement by the Queensland Government. When some residents resisted, local police burnt down their homes.

“The house that I’m living in now was my mother’s house, she moved into that house in 1994. My mother was one of the ladies involved in the burning of Mapoon, she was working in the girls’ dormitory. She gets emotional even if I bring it up; some of the elders here are still hurt by what happened.”
 
Starting in the 1970s people slowly began moving back to Mapoon. Sandra is proud of her community’s resilience: “Despite all that Mapoon had been through, its people were still strong and proud.”

Currently, land in Mapoon is communally titled; residents live in “social housing” owned by the government. World Vision is working with the Queensland Government, Indigenous Business Australia, and land valuation experts to come up with an approach to make home ownership accessible for community members.  
 
Sandra adds, “My people never forgot about Mapoon, we all came back and built it up again and now we can own our own homes.” Hopefully the Mapoon Home Ownership Project will serve as a precedent for other Indigenous communities wanting the option of purchasing homes on government titled land.  

To learn more about World Vision’s current work in Mapoon click here

To learn about the origins of the Mapoon Home Ownership Project click here