A regional governance structure for the Kimberley? Twenty-five years on from Crocodile Hole

Abstract: In 1991 a large bush meeting was held at Rugan in the East Kimberley, organised by the Kimberley Land Council and attended by more than 500 Aboriginal people from across the Kimberley. (1) This meeting is looked upon as one of the most significant expressions of pan-Kimberley identity in the post-settlement era and generated considerable discussion at a regional level. This event, which has since become known as 'Crocodile Hole', occurred in the shadow of the failure of land rights to be passed in Western Australia in the mid-1980s, and the impending Mabo decision. This paper attempts to track the idea of a regional governance structure in the Kimberley since the time of Crocodile Hole and how this idea has articulated with wider political and policy trends in the region and beyond. It notes that principles identified by the Crocodile Hole meeting remain as core ideals for Aboriginal leadership within the Kimberley, yet the form and structure by which regional governance is being attempted has altered significantly over time. In a contemporary context, it concludes that such a structure would require particular characteristics to be deemed acceptable by Aboriginal groups across the Kimberley and to be engaged with by government. The potential for a regional governance structure that stretches from the East Kimberley to the West Kimberley has long been the subject of discussion among Aboriginal leadership and observers (see Appendix One). From time to time, Western Australian state and/or federal governments have weighed into these discussions but, for the most part, they have been driven by Aboriginal leaders and organisations, notably the Kimberley Land Council (KLC) and, more recently, Aarnja Ltd (Aarnja) and Kimberley Futures. (2) The concept has gained favour at particular scales of political authority--local, regional, state and federal--depending on the coalescence of interests across these scales and on other dynamics around Indigenous policy directions and ideology, as well as the developments around native title. (3) This paper explores the ebb and flow of this conversation, the institutional drivers and the participants. It seeks to identify why, at certain times, the idea of regional governance structure has come to the fore and, at other times, has fallen off the regional agenda entirely. It also explores how this tension between localism and regionalism has been effected by the emergence of a new layer of governance in the Kimberley: that of Prescribed Bodies Corporate (PBCs) set up to hold the rights associated with native title determinations. It concludes that the relatively new entities of Aarnja and Kimberley Futures have the potential to contribute to the region by taking strategic advantage of emergent gaps, and points of leverage, in the post-native title landscape of the Kimberley. Background The development of a pan-Kimberley political consciousness among Aboriginal people had been growing through the 1960s (Bolger and Rumley 1982), but was to become fully manifest as a result of the events on Noonkanbah Station (4) in the late '70s, which culminated in a blockade by the Yungngora people to stop oil drilling taking place on their country (Hawke and Gallagher 1989; Kolig 1987; Sullivan 1996). Aboriginal people came from across the Kimberley to support the blockade, and in May 1978 the KLC was formed to take up the fight for land rights in the region. (5) The decade of the 1980s is considered as an epoch of decolonisation for the Kimberley. It was a time when Indigenous organisations across the region began to gain considerable power and resources, and when many dozens of outstations we're being set up and beginning to function. Elements of the narrative around being an Aboriginal person in the Kimberley were becoming increasingly coherent. This emergent regional consciousness was expressed in the establishment of a number of regional organisations: the KLC, the Kimberley Language Resource Centre (KLRC) and the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre (KALACC). …