8.2 Kia Dowell, WA Kia Dowell is a Gija woman from Warmun Community (Turkey Creek) in the East Kimberley, WA. Kia is the Chair of Gelganyem Limited and shared her story, experiences and observations related to the closure of Rio Tinto’s Argyle Diamond Mine. Gelganyem Limited was established as one of two Trusts to manage and distribute funds for the benefit of Traditional Owners arising from Rio Tinto’s Argyle Participation Agreement. The Agreement included an Indigenous Land Use Agreement and Management Plan Agreement guiding the day-to-day relationship between the seven daam/Dawang (estate groups) who asserted some form of connection to the area at the time of the negotiations. Gelganyem is not a PBC but has fulfilled a quasi-PBC role in the absence of native title determination and continues to oversee and manage the funds established to benefit current and future generations of Traditional Owners under the ILUA. Kia first joined the board of Gelganyem in 2017 and was appointed Chairperson unexpectedly at the same time. But her journey started in 2008 when she was called back from the USA where she had just graduated with her MBA from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) following a successful chapter as a college athlete playing basketball (NCAA Div I). … my grandmother had been involved in negotiating the Argyle agreement, amongst a really strong group of Elders and leaders. She had said to me at that time ‘You’ve had your fun, time to come back. And we need mob in our own family. And people who understand [kartiya1 speak] and the way this company is talking. And bring it back and explain to us in simple way what it means’. Kia joined Argyle Diamonds as a graduate, insisting on being in the mainstream graduate program and not ‘pigeon-holed as a field officer or a community relations officer’. The grad program gave Kia ’a good feel for what the company was trying to achieve’ and it became important knowledge as she entered the governance world of her community. Kia described a fraught introduction to Gelganyem when she was elected to the Board and quickly realised Traditional Owner Directors were not empowered. She observed and experienced firsthand the impact of independent directors at that time who were not building the board’s capacity and facilitating self-governance but, rather, controlling the agenda. Kia described how important the role of Gelganyem has been in ensuring appropriate representation amongst Traditional Owners and families, and establishing community governance procedures before they pursued their native title determination. While it seems that native title was supposed to have been pursued immediately after the ILUA was registered, the benefits of no one having actually done this were noteworthy. 1 Kartiya is a common term for non-Aboriginal person. 62 Women in Native Title: Native Title Report 2024