Living on Country

Yvonne Stewart is the Chairperson of the Joint Management Committee of the Arakwal National Park, Byron Bay. This is not a ‘co-managed national park’ on the model currently arising from a handback of a National Park to Aboriginal owners with mandatory lease-back to the NSW National Parks Service. Instead, this is a Jointly Managed area arising from a long process of negotiation to achieve an Indigenous Land Use Agreement [ILUA] under the Commonwealth Native Title Act. The Park is jointly managed by the Arakwal Aboriginal Corporation and by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. In October 2006, Yvonne talked about the positive and the negative sides of the community’s experience of the joint management of the Arakwal National Park. In this interview, conducted soon after in November 2006, Yvonne discussed these issues further but began by explaining the Park’s position which is within her community’s broader concern for their country