2006 Mckell Medal Award

Territorian from Humpty Doo wins 2006 McKell Medal

Kate Hadden, Tiwi Land Council’s Secretary for Land and Resource Management won the 2006 McKell Medal for excellence in natural resource management.

The award commemorates the outstanding contribution made to soil and land conservation by Sir William McKell, Premier of NSW from 1941 to 1947 and Australian Governor-General from 1947 to 1953.

The award was presented by the former Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry at the Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council in Brisbane. The minister noted Kate’s outstanding work to ‘help the Indigenous landowners of Bathurst and Melville Islands build sustainable economies based on sound natural resource management without compromising cultural and natural heritage values’.

‘Kate has supported the Tiwi landowners’ return to ethical and sound natural resource management by providing planning and technical tools for increasingly sophisticated land management practices’, the Minister said.

Kate has investigated ways for Indigenous communities to shift from traditional custodianship of land to contemporary resource management while improving economic and social conditions in the communities. She has also helped transfer skills and knowledge to today’s and tomorrow’s Tiwi leaders and the broader community.

Kate said the message she will be taking is that natural resource management is about people. ‘Natural resource management should be about supporting people’s lives,’ Kate said, ‘and I think the Tiwi people have shown that this can be done.’

In 2002 Kate was awarded the Northern Territory Rural Woman of the Year award which led to her research studies with the Inuit people of Canada.

The Inuit successfully attained self-determination and are focusing on building a sustainable system to advance socio-economic development through natural resource utilisation.

Kate’s tour of Nunavat and the Inuit people gave her first hand knowledge of their situation that was valuable to the Tiwi people and to natural resource management in the Northern Territory. She learned how this Indigenous society is successfully shifting from traditional custodianship of land to contemporary resource rmanagement, while improving social and economic outcomes for their people.

Kate spent one month visiting and studying Inuit organisations and enterprises in Nunavut. She attended meetings and discussions with a range of organisations and individuals to gain insight into the processes and procedures governing Indigenous control of land and land administration, along with the development of sustainable economic ventures through natural resource utilisation.

Kate met representatives of the Canadian Federal Government, the Government of Nunavut and Inuit representative bodies and Inuit-owned businesses.

Kate believes that the Inuit experience has proven that the development of economic opportunities linked to self-determination and self-management will have positive social outcomes. While it is unlikely that the Tiwi Islands will attain territorial status as the Inuit people have, important elements within the Nunavat model can be applied to the Tiwi situation.

With the Tiwi Land Council Kate developed the first Natural Resource Management Strategy for the Tiwi Islands—one of the first regional strategies in the Northern Territory.