The Katiti Aboriginal Land Trust (Katiti ALT) is a

land trust Land trusts are nonprofit organizations which own and manage land, and sometimes waters. There are three common types of land trust, distinguished from one another by the ways in which they are legally structured and by the purposes for which th ...

for a block of land in the southwest of the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...

of Australia located in the locality of Petermann. It was created through the Katiti Land Claim in 1980. The trust's owners include

Pitjantjatjara The Pitjantjatjara (; or ) are an Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert near Uluru. They are closely related to the Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra and their languages are, to a large extent, mutually intelligible (all are va ...

Yankunytjatjara The Yankunytjatjara people, also written Yankuntjatjarra, Jangkundjara, and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of South Australia. Language Yankunytjatjara is a Western Desert language belonging to the Wati la ...

and Luritja people. The block of land is officially referred to as Northern Territory Portion 1818. It borders the larger Petermann Land Trust area and Uluṟu–Kata Tjuṯa National Park to the north and west, and two pastoral stations to the east and south:

Curtin Springs Curtin Springs is a pastoral lease operating as a cattle station in the Alice Springs region of the Northern Territory of Australia. Occupying an area of , the working cattle station and roadhouse facility is located on the Lasseter Highwa ...

and Mulga Park. The town of

Yulara Yulara is a town in the southern region of the Northern Territory, Australia. It lies as an unincorporated enclave within MacDonnell Region. At the , Yulara had a permanent population of 1,099, in an area of . It is by road from World Heritag ...

is excluded from the Land Trusts, and sits between the Katiti block and Uluṟu–Kata Tjuṯa National Park. The trust is named after Katiti (''Bobbie's Well''), a natural

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season) Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...

located about south of

Lake Amadeus Lake Amadeus (together with Lake Neale, Pitjantjatjara: ''Pantu'' ("salt lakes")) is a large salt lake in the southwest corner of Northern Territory of Australia, about north of Uluru. The smaller Lake Neale is adjacent to the northwest. It ...

. This spring was first written about by Baldwin Spencer and

Francis James Gillen Francis James Gillen (28 October 1855 – 5 June 1912), also known as Frank Gillen and F. J. Gillen, was an early Australian anthropologist and ethnologist. He is known for his work with W. Baldwin Spencer, including their seminal work ''T ...

. They visited it in 1894 on their way to

Uluṟu Uluru (; pjt, Uluṟu ), also known as Ayers Rock ( ) and officially gazetted as UluruAyers Rock, is a large sandstone formation in the centre of Australia. It is in the southern part of the Northern Territory, southwest of Alice Springs ...

, and recorded the name "Kurtitina" (more accurately, '). The

prospecting Prospecting is the first stage of the geological analysis (followed by exploration) of a territory. It is the search for minerals, fossils, precious metals, or mineral specimens. It is also known as fossicking. Traditionally prospecting rel ...

expedition led by

Lawrence Wells Lawrence Allen "Larry" Wells (30 April 1860 – 11 May 1938), frequently spelled Laurence Allen Wells, was an Australian explorer. Wells was born at Yallum Station near Penola, South Australia and grew up in the Mount Gambier, South Australia ...

visited the spring in 1903, and

Herbert Basedow Herbert Basedow (27 October 1881 – 4 June 1933) was an Australian anthropologist, geologist, politician, explorer and medical practitioner. Basedow was born in Kent Town, South Australia. His early education was in Adelaide, South Australia ...

marked it on his maps as "Curtyteena".

History

Before the 1970s, the area of land now held by the Katiti ALT was considered crown land by the government. The region to the southwest had been declared an Aboriginal reservation in 1920. An area of land around

and

Kata Tjuṯa Kata Tjuṯa / The Olgas (Pitjantjatjara: , lit. 'many heads'; ) is a group of large, domed rock formations or bornhardts located about southwest of Alice Springs, in the southern part of the Northern Territory, central Australia. Uluṟu / Aye ...

had been made into the Ayers Rock–Mt Olga National Park in 1958. The Katiti block, however, was considered unused. In 1976, the Australian Federal Government passed the

Aboriginal Land Rights Act The ''Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976'' (ALRA) is Australian federal government legislation that provides the basis upon which Aboriginal Australian people in the Northern Territory can claim rights to land based on tradit ...

. This law allowed Aboriginal communities to claim ownership of unused land, and to be granted

freehold title In English law, a fee simple or fee simple absolute is an estate in land, a form of freehold ownership. A "fee" is a vested, inheritable, present possessory interest in land. A "fee simple" is real property held without limit of time (i.e., per ...

to that land if they could show that they had a historical association with it. Section 4 of the act gave the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs the power to establish Land Trusts to look after the title. The Katiti Land Claim was formally submitted in 1979. The claim was for a larger area than what is held by the Trust today, and included the Ayers Rock–Mt Olga National Park. It was submitted by the

Central Land Council The Central Land Council (CLC) is a land council that represents the Aboriginal peoples of the southern half of the Northern Territory of Australia (NT), predominantly with regard to land issues. it is one of four land councils in the Northern T ...

on the behalf of several hundred people, most of whom lived at Muṯitjulu. The people were granted legal ownership to the block of land now held by the Katiti ALT on 30 September 1980. They were not granted the title to Ayers Rock–Mt Olga because it was already being used as a national park. They were, however, recognised as the park's

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have right ...

('). Also excluded from the property granted were a area surrounding the resort town of

, and a area covering the Petermann Road, which provided tourist access to Uluṟu. Petermann Road was later replaced by the

Lasseter Highway Lasseter Highway is a fully sealed 244 kilometre highway in the Northern Territory of Australia. It connects Yulara, Kata Tjuta and Uluru east to the Stuart Highway at Erldunda. The highway is named after Lewis Hubert (Harold Bell) Lasseter, ...

, and the government transferred the title to the old road to the Katiti ALT on 23 February 1990. Legal ownership over the national park's land was eventually granted to its traditional owners in 1985, and the title to this area is held by the Uluṟu–Kata Tjuṯa Aboriginal Land Trust. Ownership of the Yulara area was the subject of a court case, which ended in 2006.

References

{{Indigenous Australians Aboriginal land councils Aboriginal organisations in the Northern Territory 1980 establishments in Australia Organizations established in 1980