Indigenous communities in remote regions have been recognised as among the most vulnerable groups of Australians to climate change impact.  Their heightened vulnerability is mainly associated with remoteness and disadvantage in terms they have faced for decades.  While highlighting this vulnerability dimension is legitimate and essential, it is also important to build on the resilience and resourcefulness of these communities.

In this paper, we present research findings from a project that engages resilience assessment and future scenarios to inform building resilient communities in the Torres Strait. It  builds on communities’ interpretations of resilience and their perceptions of why and how resilient their communities are.  We learnt that maintaining community and cultural strength, including language and local knowledge, were  identified as central to perceptions of communities’ resilience to climate and other changes. This perspective resonates with a notion of resilience in the literature as maintaining identity in the face of change. Surveys-, scenarios- and review-based perspectives were used in order to develop a systems model that characterises the state of key identity variables of the Torres Strait region.  While maintaining and enhancing desired system elements of the region is essential for resilience, so is changing undesirable and persistent elements such as poor health. The model will be used to facilitate dialogue amongst stakeholders about which system elements and interactions need to be maintained or enhanced, as well as, which need changing to establish adaptation pathways for climate and other change in the region.