NAIDOC Week
2025
National
NAIDOC
Week,
The
Next
Generation:
Strength,
Vision
&
Legacy
KKT is celebrating NAIDOC Week with stories of our partners’ grassroots innovation and success within each of our six funding pillars.
National NAIDOC Week celebrations are held in the first week of July each year to recognise and celebrate the histories, cultures and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
This year the theme is “The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy”, marking a powerful milestone of 50 years of NAIDOC and celebrating not only the achievements of the past, but the bright future ahead—empowered by the strength of young leaders, the vision of communities and the legacy of ancestors.
Over the past two decades, Traditional Owners and Elders across Arnhem Land have forged a powerful legacy in the land management sector through community-controlled organisations that honour and reflect more than 65,000 years of ongoing custodianship.
“When we design specific projects, they work well for us. And the same can be said for KKT, when people ask me, where did this KKT idea come from? I always say it came from Bininj ideas.” - Dean Yibarbuk, Co-Chair of KKT and Chair of Warddeken
The scope of KKT’s partners’ work is more holistic than Western understandings of conservation.
Equal to the preservation of the region’s precious biodiversity levels, their management of Country also encompasses the practice of culture and ceremony; the critical intergenerational transfer of Bininj knowledge; and actually supporting people to return to live and thrive on their homelands.
This has laid the foundation for KKT’s approach to safeguarding vital ecosystems for future generations, which consists of six key funding pillars.
To celebrate NAIDOC Week, we are sharing stories of our partners’ grassroots innovation and success within each of these pillars.
2025 NAIDOC Week, The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy
Managing fire and climate
One of the greatest stories of community vision is the establishment of Arnhem Land Fire Abatement (ALFA). In 2011, ranger groups across West Arnhem Land decided they wanted to register their annual, planned savanna burning as an eligible offsets project to earn and sell Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).
This led to extensive consultations around how to create a company that represented the region’s collective engagement with the emerging sector. Now, ALFA supports 11 ranger groups—working across 80,000 square kilometres of Country—to annually engage with the carbon market.
Their ACCUs are of the highest integrity, and as a non-profit, 95% of income returns to the same remote ranger communities responsible for their generation.
This funding is then used to address gaps in government service provision; and to realise self-determined projects designed to benefit and uplift both current and future generations across Arnhem Land.
“My Country’s that rocky and remote, the only way to get there’s in a chopper. Old Lofty [Bardayal Nadjamerrek] showed me my Country for the first time a long time back, and I’ll always be thankful. When the fire project started, I got back out there every year to burn in the early dry season.” - Fred Hunter, Director of KKT and Warddeken Land Management
Not only is this vital environmental work protecting the biodiverse landscapes of Arnhem Land and generating real, self-determined economic development in some of the most remote communities, it is also bringing immense wider benefits.
ASRAC ranger Marcia Malibirr performing planned fine-scale burning in Central Arnhem Land
Educating future custodians
Then, Traditional Owners of the Warddeken IPA saw that they needed to secure full-time, on-Country education for their children and young people to further support the long-term sustainability of the West Arnhem Land ranger movement.
In the absence of adequate state delivery, they established the Nawarddeken Academy: an independent, community-owned K-12 school, now operating from three sites across the IPA and ensuring future generations can learn ‘both ways’ on their homelands. Today, the Nawarddeken Academy continues to report average attendance rates of over 90% while students are living in community.
"We want our kids to graduate here in our homelands, so we can celebrate their milestones.” - Michelle Bangarr, Director of Nawarddeken Academy and Cultural Education Lead
Now, other communities are wanting to achieve the same for their young people.
After experiencing years of a similar lack of state-delivered education—and then witnessing the overwhelming success of the Nawarddeken Academy—Traditional Owners, Elders and community leaders from the neighbouring Djelk IPA also decided to devise their own solution.
This began with a year-long consultation process which, by the end of 2023, culminated in the establishment of the Homeland School Company (HSC): a First Nations community-controlled organisation aiming to establish three on-Country, full-time schools across the IPA—each community-owned and led with its own bi-cultural, place-based curriculum.
Nawarddeken Academy students on bush trip
Investing in women rangers
Shortly after this, Warddeken Land Management and Mimal Land Management Aboriginal Corporation became some of the first organisations to really prioritise the presence and participation of women rangers.
Within the first 12 months of Warddeken delivering a daluk (women’s) ranger program, women’s engagement rose to represent 40% of the ranger workforce. Today, this number is closer to 50%.
Meanwhile, senior women at Mimal wanted to find a way to support and connect with more women rangers, and so they formed the Strong Women for Healthy County Network: the region’s first wraparound support entity for First Nations women caring for Country across the Northern Territory.
“I was sitting down looking at all the workgroups, and I saw young women there, sitting there, questioning, wanting to speak out loud. And that's what I wanted to see, you know, women sharing their knowledge and understanding each other, even though we come from different communities.” - Annette Miller, Director of Mimal, Alternate Director for KKT and founding advocate for SWHC Network
Today, the Network’s annual forum supports 250 First Nations women and girls to come together to learn, share and connect.
2024 Strong Women for Healthy Country Forum
Protecting native biodiversity
Traditional Owners’ dedicated vision for the future is also evident in ongoing efforts to protect native animal species across West and Central Arnhem Land.
Through programs like Warddeken’s Mayh (Species) Recovery Program, rangers work year-round to both monitor the populations of native species and reverse the decline in biodiversity levels threatening the long-term health of Country.
Of particular significance is the djabbo (northern quoll), the djebuyh (northern brushtail possum) and the yirlinkirrkkirr (white-throated grasswren), all at-risk species whose known populations Warddeken is protecting through planned mosaic burning and the management of feral species.
“We believe that animals… They will feel the footsteps of the right people walking on their Country and they will come back.” - Terrah Guymala, senior Warddeken ranger, Director of Warddeken and Alternate Director for KKT
In 2024 alone, rangers deployed 140 camera traps across the Warddeken IPA, collecting important, cumulative data about these populations—including one critical sighting of the djabbo.
Warddeken daluk (woman) ranger Tinnesha Nabulwad setting camera trap
Safeguarding Indigenous culture
The protection and continuation of culture are similarly among some of the highest priorities for Traditional Owners and Elders across West and Central Arnhem Land.
To guarantee that young ones learn the stories, ceremonies and Songlines passed down for countless generations, KKT’s partner organisations are embedding these practices and knowledge in ongoing cultural heritage projects.
Warddeken’s Kuwarddebim (Rock art) Project is actively surveying and documenting the tens of thousands of kuwarddebim sites across the West Arnhem Plateau, and importantly, supporting Traditional Owners and their families to reconnect with these galleries and their stories.
Meanwhile, Mimal is supporting the retracing of Songlines in some of the most remote parts of Central Arnhem Land and enabling Traditional Owners to reconnect with homelands for the first time in years.
“Bim represent stories so it's important that we protect bim, as if there's no bim... There's no story.” - Jayden Wurrkgidj, Warddeken ranger and Kuwarddebim Project Officer
Together, this work is ensuring that the immense bodies of knowledge held by old people are valued, recorded and then safely passed on to the next generation.
Image from Mimal's Mibbarr (White-bellied sea eagle) Songline Project
Supporting people on Country
For many years, Traditional Owners expressed a clear need to transform the way professional development and training was delivered to remote ranger communities.
Overall, most external delivery was considered inflexible, as well as both culturally and linguistically inaccessible. This prompted Warddeken Land Management and Mimal Land Management Aboriginal Corporation to establish the region’s first on-Country, adult training initiative.
The goal of the Bidwern Butj Uni is to deliver fit-for-purpose training and professional development that empowers First Nations staff to progress from ranger roles to senior leadership positions.
“Our people will have access to two-way land management education and training that will be taught on Country. I hope that other universities will see it and say that idea came from Bininj, that Bush Uni.” - Dean Yibarbuk, Co-Chair of KKT and Chair of Warddeken
Since its inception in 2023, the initiative has been trialling innovative, culturally-responsive approaches to adult education and ranger training, setting a benchmark for on-Country learning.
Mimal ranger Anthea Lawrence receiving certificate during on-Country graduation
2025 NAIDOC Week, The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy
Looking forward, KKT is more committed than ever to connecting likeminded supporters with our partner organisations’ self-determined work for Country, culture and community; ensuring First Nations communities are at the forefront of the regeneration of the same ecosystems they have cared for since time immemorial.
“It’s still a long road for all of us. While we are returning to our homelands and making it a success, there are still a lot of needs and we need more people to be engaged. So, I am looking forward to seeing where else KKT can invest, where else we can offer support. We will plant a seed here and we will plant another seed there, and we will make sure those seeds keep growing.” - Dean Yibarbuk, Co-Chair of KKT and Chair of Warddeken
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