Traditional owners in Kakadu are celebrating the formal handback of their ancestral lands following a ceremony in the heart of one of Australia's most iconic national parks.
The World Heritage-listed park was established in the 1970s but until Thursday only half of the region had been returned to its traditional custodians.
Thursday's historic ceremony at Cooinda, near the famous Yellow Water billabong, means the majority of the park is now in Aboriginal hands after the deeds of title were handed over to the newly recognised land holders.
"For too long there have been two classes of land in Kakadu National Park — Aboriginal land and other land 'subject to Aboriginal land claim'," Northern Land Council chairman Samuel Bush-Blanasi said.
He said the campaign for formal recognition began in 1977 when a federal inquiry into the Ranger uranium mine recommended the Alligator Rivers region that covers Kakadu be declared as Aboriginal land.
"Today's land grants to the Kakadu Aboriginal Land Trust, to be held on behalf of the traditional owners, completes 45 years of unfinished business," Mr Bush-Blanasi said.
The handback includes around 10,000 square kilometres of land that is the traditional country of the Limilngan/Minitja, Murumburr, Gianduja, Yurlkmanj, Wurngomgu, Bolmo, Wurrkbarbar, Matjba, Uwinymil, Bunidj, Djindibi, Mirrar Gundjeihmi and Dadjbaku peoples.
Mr Bush-Blanasi said the handback was more than symbolic recognition as it will provide ongoing economic benefits for local people, who now have control over what happens on their lands.
"There are new opportunities for traditional owners to be directing, involved in and to benefit from improved and enhanced park operations, fire abatement programs and the new carbon economy," he said.
As part of the handback arrangements, the land will be leased back to the Director of National Parks, which will provide ongoing rental income to traditional owners.
"Land security is economic security and this move empowers Aboriginal Territorians to use their land for their future," the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, said.
Two other land claims resolved in bittersweet ceremony
In a separate ceremony in the Roper River region earlier on Thursday, the minister handed over the deeds of title for both the Urapunga township near Ngukurr and the Old Elsey Homestead near Mataranka.
Mr Bush-Blanasi said it was a bittersweet occasion for the Budal Yutpundji-Milwarapara group.
"The old people for this country have handed down stories about terrible days in the Urapunga area and right along the Roper River country back in the 1870s and 1880s," he said.
"Back in those days our people were shot at with rifles, they were hunted, but they and the many generations that followed them have survived.
"Today we honour the lives of the old people who kept our laws, our culture, our language and our lives strong."
Mr Bush-Blanasi also welcomed the handback of the Old Elsey Homestead to the Bobobingga clan of the Yangman people.
"Although we are sad that the old people didn't live to see this day, to see this land coming back to all the young ones here today, we are also really happy," he said.
