Editors --- "Wuggunbun Statement of the Kimberley Land Council - Digest" [2003] AUIndigLawRpr 49; (2003) 8(3) Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 113

• Wuggunbun Statement Of The Kimberley Land Council

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Indigenous Statements – Australia

Wuggunbun Statement of the Kimberley Land Council

Broome, Western Australia

11 September 2003

Mr Gallop and Mr Ripper, we are sending these words to you for the Western Australian Government. We welcome your representative to the lands of the Kimberley Aboriginal peoples.

These lands have been occupied, managed and controlled by our Kimberley Aboriginal nations for time immemorial. We want to make sure they keep on providing for our children.

For this to happen, and at this time of our history, there needs to be a new way of dealing with the issues that concern us. It is clear that the old ways have not worked. We are now calling on the Government to join us in finding this new way.

The KLC [Kimberley Land Council] was started by the old people at Noonkanbah in 1978. We started with nothing, and now we are celebrating 25 years of representing our people.

Kimberley Traditional Owners of the many Aboriginal nations in this region have gathered here over the past three days with our organisations – Kimberley Language Resource Centre, Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre and the Land Council. It is through these organisations, and our health, education, resource and other organisations, that we get things done for our people – look after our land, law and culture and our language.

We have been fighting for our land and for what is important to us for many years. We have achieved many things, but many of the things that worried us then have still not been fixed up, and there are other problems that have got worse.

We are very worried for our young people, for our communities, and our country. Too many of our young people are not getting an education and do not get jobs. We suffer appalling health, and our people die when they are much younger than non-Aboriginal people. Government departments and programs have had a great impact on our lives, but they have marginalised us and they have not worked.

At this meeting, we have reflected on the pressures that confront our people and our organisations. And we have talked about changes that make it harder for us to make sure we maintain the right to determine our own future. Changes to the administration and funding for our Aboriginal organisations make it harder for us to respond fairly to the needs and demands of our people. We cannot do this with the financial resources we are provided with. Changes at the national level also affect us. We do not believe we are being treated fairly, either as the original owners and occupiers of this country or as citizens.

Our people are frustrated by the failure of government to recognise us as distinct and unique peoples, as Traditional Owners of our country with rights that need to be respected. This is not a new story for us. It is something that Kimberley Aboriginal people have been saying for a long time. Your willingness to listen to and recognise us now has to ensure that more is delivered.

We acknowledge the good things your government has done. The Tjurabalan and Karajarri determinations of native title are very important to those Traditional Owners. It is important now to negotiate other native title agreements. We congratulate you for the efforts made in Purnululu, and for the land set aside for Traditional Owners and members of the Stolen Generations at Moola Bulla. We acknowledge your commitment to negotiate a comprehensive settlement of all the issues of concern to the people after the Tjurabalan determination, and to negotiating a global settlement for native title rights and development in Miriuwung Gajerrong country.

While these are good things, they are done after a lot of struggle and a lot of waiting on the part of our people. They are done in a piecemeal way and the good will that comes from them can be taken away by the things that go against us.

When governments and others talk about native title, they often talk about extinguishment. This is dead-end talk. This is a policy that cannot succeed and will only lead to more division and discord between us. Native title means more to us than hunting, fishing and camping. You need to understand that if you extinguish our native title, you extinguish our people.

We stand here at Wuggubun, on land that is part of an Aboriginal-owned pastoral lease with an Aboriginal community set up on it. The community here does not want to extinguish our legal rights, yet the State Government has put out a notice to extinguish native title in this place.

We want equality and justice for Aboriginal people. You came to government saying you want to make good agreements with us, but now the word coming from your government has changed and has put more pressure and uncertainty on us.

We will keep working and talking, but our relationship with the State Government has a long way to go. We have already talked to you about land justice in a way that recognises our rights and interests as equals. The need for this to happen is urgent. Our leaders struggled for many years for fairness, and substantive as well as formal equality for our peoples. This has been hard work without great rewards. You can make a difference to improve all this. This is what we expect.

We need to get better ways of working together, where fairness has to prevail and where our rights and interests as Indigenous peoples and citizens might start to be recognised and enjoyed. We have to work together in ways that respect our law and culture, and our authority structures; and in ways that do not cut across our Aboriginal ways of doing things. A true partnership is needed, not one that only admits us when it suits the Government’s policies and purposes.

We are looking for a commitment from you to a true partnership with us in the Kimberley. We want to work with you on finding solutions on a regional level to all the things that concern us.

There are opportunities in this region. We have been building relationships and making agreements with many in the mining and other industries and some of our people are starting up their own businesses.

There are many areas where we can work together to make sure that problems get fixed instead of getting worse, and we make the most of the opportunities.

Kimberley Aboriginal people have come together and decided to put a proposal to the Government.

We seek your commitment to a regional framework that addresses all our concerns, in a way that recognises that we are unique, and protects what is unique about us. They also need to be addressed so that we can contribute to the economy. Leave us aside and the problems get worse.

We stand ready to be engaged with government in a new way, to take account of everything that has been too hard to deal with or has not gone right so far. It is time to get this right, for us and for the wider community.

We ask the Government to commit to this regional framework as a way of finding regional settlements that have law, culture and language at their centre. These regional settlements need to be negotiated on fair and just terms and address the land justice and heritage issues, the environmental issues, governance, economic development, our quality of life and services and how we heal our families and our people.

This is what we are asking you to commit to – a true and meaningful partnership with us in this region. For this to work there needs to be an agreed framework. There needs to be people from both sides dedicated to do the necessary work. And there needs to be resources to make sure it can happen. Without proper resources, none of us can meet our obligations and responsibilities.