In order to maintain healthy and sustainable homelands Kaanju Pama are moving back to our Ngaachi and reaffirming our position as primary land managers. The sustainable indigenous management of our homelands was disrupted when we were taken forcibly from our lands and centralised in towns and artificial communities under the Protection and Assimilation policies and practices of government.
Our knowledge of our homelands is broad and detailed. It is based on many generations of sustainable use and management and infinite empirical observations of the environment, ecology and the elements. Today, we face many land management problems not of our own making, and we are determined and obligated as traditional owners to rehabilitate our Story Places and restore the land to its sustainable state.
Kaanju people living at Chuulangun have developed a comprehensive Kaanju Homelands Land and Resource Management Framework for the indigenous management of our homelands. We initiated this framework and prepared it ourselves with no funding and only minimal in-kind contribution from our support network. The framework sets out the goals for the management of Kaanju homelands, outlines management issues, objectives, strategies and projects, as well as outcomes, possible sources of funding, collaboration and support, and proposed timeframes for the implementation of strategies and projects.
The goals of Kaanju land and resource management, as set out in the framework, are:
- To conserve, protect and enhance the natural and cultural values of Kaanju homelands for the benefit of current and future generations of Kaanju people.
- To manage Kaanju homelands in accordance with Kaanju laws and customs.
- To reaffirm traditional Kaanju governance structures in relation to land and resource management issues on Kaanju homelands.
- To promote the recognition, locally, regionally and nationally, of the Kaanju people as primary managers and decision makers for our homelands.
- To incorporate, where appropriate, traditional knowledge with western scientific processes providing beneficial outcomes for natural and cultural resource management policy and practice.
Our land management framework considers a number of issues that are all integral to our philosophy of holistic and sustainable homelands management. These land management issues are being addressed with the development of projects and proposals initiated by Kaanju people living on homelands. A number of these issues need our immediate on-ground attention.
