Aboriginal Carbon Fund meets with Cook Shire Council
Recently Cook Shire Council had requested a meeting with me to talk to them about what Aboriginal Carbon Farming is & how it could benefit the Aboriginal communities within the Cook Shire region.
I met with Mayor Peter Scott, CEO Timothy Cronin, Councillor John ‘Chook’ Giese and Councillor Larissa Hale to talk about how the Aboriginal Carbon Fund has been assisting Aboriginal communities across the top end of Australia.
Cook Shire Mayor Peter Scott, Councillor Larissa Hale, Cook Shire CEO Tim Cronin with AbCF Community Development Officer Lauren Bowyer
Mayor Scott was very intrigued with the whole concept of Aboriginal Carbon Farming and showed genuine interest in the idea of Aboriginal people regaining management of their traditional estates and being able to return to traditional burning practises.
Mayor Scott also mentioned that he feels that this could be the answer to help Cook Shire in their Closing the Gap efforts by supporting and encouraging Indigenous-led land management within the Cook region.
All in all, I would say that Cook Shire are not only in support of the work that Aboriginal Carbon Fund is doing, but I must say that I felt a sense of excitement for the unique possibilities that carbon farming could bring to Aboriginal Communities within the Cook Shire region.
I also attended a Cape York Traditional Owner meeting in Cairns which was facilitated by Cape York Land Council.
The purpose of the meeting was to give Cape York Traditional Owner’s a voice on how future business for Cape York Land Council and their respective communities should look.
As a Cape York Traditional Owner, it was refreshing to see that the majority of the group was on the same page and were looking for positive solutions to ongoing issues.
One of the topics that was discussed was the need to find a source of income for each community/clan group that can assist them to move forward and hopefully to break the chains of funding dependency.
I was there representing my clan group as well as the Aboriginal Carbon Fund, so I took the opportunity to mention the unique possibilities that carbon farming could potentially have on the communities in Cape York.
Overall, I feel that this information was welcomed by all and I have offered to arrange meetings with groups should they wish to pursue carbon farming on their traditional estates.
