Set deep in the scrubland, and accessible via a long red dirt track, it is the place where family birthdays and weddings are marked, the place Delma and husband Alphonse Cox intend to bequeath to their offspring when they die.

It's called Gnylmarung and it looks out on the Indian Ocean, near the entrance to Beagle Bay on the Dampier Peninsula, in remote Western Australia.

It is one of more than 270 remote communities in the west with an uncertain future whose viability and worth, thanks to Tony Abbott, is suddenly the subject of a national debate.

The Prime Minister's comments in support of the WA government's plans to close half the communities prompted almost universal outrage and raw anger from indigenous leaders this week.

But the reaction on the ground was something else, something closer to deep offence and grief. "Everyone is hurting, thinking what are they going to do, where are they going to go," Delma Cox says. "It's terrible. I don't like it one bit."

Not since John Howard declared that there was no need to say sorry for past injustices has a prime minister so unwittingly inflicted such hurt on indigenous Australia.

Ms Cox regards Mr Abbott's assertion that "it's not the job of the taxpayer to subsidise lifestyle choices" as "just the same" as the Howard refusal on countenance an apology.

She is well-credentialed to comment, having lived through every element of dispossession a contemporary indigenous woman could experience. Her grandmother was forcibly removed from her parents and she was taken as a ward of the state as a little girl.

She has seen governments introduce policies to encourage indigenous people to return to their country, only to dismantle them, and then repeat the whole process all over again. "Where will they go?" she asks.

She was raised by the nuns in the dormitory of the Beagle Bay Mission and chooses not to talk of the cruelty she witnessed on the mission. She married Alphonse when she was 17 and he was 20 and looks forward to celebrating their 40^th anniversary later this year. All seven of their children completed Year 12.

While Delma is confident their hold on their land is secure, the inference that they are enjoying a subsidised "lifestyle choice" offends her because it diminishes what the couple has achieved in developing a tourism venture over the past six years.

Aside from caring for country, both say they enjoy teaching their guests about their culture. Alphonse instructs visitors how to make spears and catch fish and mud crabs. Delma shows how to cast nets, make damper and cook.

"Some of them don't even know how to cook crabs! Can you believe it?"

The case for the outstations is well documented in studies showing they save taxpayer dollars, protect heritage, reduce crime and improve health and happiness. Properly supported, they can also offer pathways towards engaging in mainstream Australia.

Sue Davenport is the manager of cultural heritage at Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa (KL), an organisation representing the Martu people in WA's Western Desert in the Pilbara region that has employed some 350 people as rangers.

"We have three remote communities – communities Tony Abbott is talking about – that are dry communities, where there is very little violence, everyone is turning up to work and the kids are going to school. Which bit of that is not working?" she asks.

The same story is told by Daniel Oades and Phillip Bibido McCarthy, who are committed to a plan to protect their Bardi Jawi lands and waters on the Dampier Peninsula by training locals to be rangers.

Some of the rangers live on outstations that McCarthy describes as the "eyes and ears" of those who are caring for country and working to save endangered species like the  Gouldian finch.

If the mood is now one of bewilderment and apprehension about the future of outstations, Delma Cox says it will turn to anger if the plan to close communities proceeds. "Everyone will fight," she says.