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Interviewee story summaries
Cissy and the BAC Board engaged a barrister to work with them to use sections within the Rule
Book on ‘eligibility of directors’. The rules provided that a person cannot be on the board if:
they have committed a criminal offence in the previous 15 years that is
– punishable by imprisonment of a period greater than 12 months, or
– involves dishonesty or misuse of corporation funds and is punishable by imprisonment for
a period of at least 3 months, or
if the Corporation has reasonable evidence that they have engaged in behaviour in the last
15 years that has led to another Indigenous corporation becoming insolvent or being wound up.
With that professional advice and support, the Board then went about the process of getting
the ‘bullies’ removed based on these rules.
Cissy and the Board also engaged AIATSIS to assist in deciding how best to educate
community, including the directors, on the native title-related processes and effective, culturally
appropriate governance arrangements. At that time, a number of board members attended the
training provided to directors in Broome.
During this first term as Chair, Cissy and the Board worked closely with KLC achieving a number
of milestones – BAC Native Title determination celebration, IPA declared, a functioning board,
Joint Management/Native Title holders engaged with the Kimberley Marine Parks – Joint
Management and other research projects on country.
Cissy left the BAC Board after her first five years as chair and felt that it had been left in a
good state. However, Cissy said that ‘the bullies started coming back’ and harassing the BAC
Directors, making it very difficult for any progress to be made once she had left. After five
years away, people in the community asked her to come back to assist with dealing with the
governance problems again. At the time of her interview, Cissy was in her second term as
elected Chair.
At that time, Cissy found that she was able to manage the native title and other processes as
well as the community disharmony because she had knowledge of the family and community
connections and dynamics, as well as the understanding of the Western systems that BAC
operates within. She felt her education, training, and experience, including a conflict resolution
and mediation course at Harvard Executive School, sponsored by Aurora Education Foundation
– Roberta Sykes Scholarship (2010) were invaluable. However, this would not have been enough
had she not had the broader understanding, knowledge and connections, and the support of
her family and others.
Cissy has found that trust, open communication, and transparency with the community is
key to addressing a lot of the community conflict. Cissy felt this trust, communication and
transparency about family kinship, connection, native title, decision-making, and the way
benefits are distributed and used empowers people and removes the knowledge gap which
enables ‘bullies’ to step in. Cissy noticed that the ‘bullies’ did not find themselves with much
support once other family and community members understood these issues better. Cissy
felt that, ultimately, this openness with community was the only thing stopping the same men
being able to garner enough support to take over the operations of BAC. Cissy emphasised that
people were still carrying a lot of burden and pain from the closure of Oombulgurri.
Australian Human Rights Commission
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