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Noonkanbah

The Kimberley Land Council (KLC) was formed at a meeting at Noonkanbah station in May 1978, and was the first Aboriginal land rights organisation to be established in Western Australia. People from more than thirty Aboriginal communities met to celebrate Aboriginal law and culture.

Land rights were discussed, along with issues such as unemployment and the lack of decent housing. Aboriginal people had fought for over a century to stay on their country, so the struggle for land rights in the Kimberley was not new in the 1970s.

But mining exploration and development created increased pressures for Aboriginal people to have their traditional rights to land recognised. The background to the establishment of the Land Council in 1978 was a protest against a mining company, Amax, which wanted to drill for oil on sacred land on the Aboriginal-owned pastoral station at Noonkanbah.

First meeting

At the first meeting of the Kimberley Land Council, Frank Chulung and Jimmy Bieundurry were elected co-chairmen. There was a further meeting in July where people elected an Executive Council, with equal representation from the east and west Kimberley. At these and other meetings in the early years of the land council, Aboriginal people had virtually no money yet traveled across the Kimberley, chucking in for petrol and food.

With few material resources and against a state government opposed to Aboriginal land rights, the KLC was an influential advocate for land rights legislation, for amendments to the Aboriginal Heritage Act, and for solutions to Aboriginal social and economic disadvantage.

Becoming an NTRB

With the introduction of the Native Title Act in 1993, the KLC became the native title representative body (NTRB) responsible for progressing native title claims on behalf of Kimberley traditional owners. Although this new function entailed an increase in Commonwealth funding it also prescribed the range of activities the land council could undertake.

Achieving despite restrictions

The 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act placed increased statutory and fiduciary duties on the Executive Council and senior staff, and also resulted in a drastic reduction of the right to negotiate in relation to future acts. KLC was among the organisations which lobbied against the amendments.

The KLC provides native title services to over twenty five native title claimant groups across the region. Representatives from these claim groups comprise the governing Executive Council of the KLC.

The KLC has a strong track record in achieving determinations of native title across the Kimberley, to date, 65 per cent of the Kimberley has been determined, and work still continues to ensure that Kimberley Traditional Owners are recognised by the High Court as having continuous and unbroken rights and interests in their land.