The rangers are forming firm friendships with the crew members from the Department of Biodiversity and Conservation fire crews of the Swan Coastal District. 

KJ’s applied linguist, Duke (Garry Earl-Spurr), recently visited the University of Western Australia (UWA) to give a seminar about KJ’s language program. He spoke to the audience about where Martu are from, and about how Martu are still looking after the languages they belong to the “right-way”.

VIC Police received the national request to reduce Aboriginal deaths in custody and by default, assumed reducing Aboriginal incarceration was a parallel objective. Their first steps? They invited one of KJ’s team over to learn more about the work between the MLP and WA police and the success of this program.

The Punmu Women & Families Program (WFP) team came together with Rawa Primary School, Punmu Home and Community Care (HACC) and the Martu Female Ranger team to dig and clean out the Jila Jila spring. When it was time to work, everyone got stuck in — some taking it in turns with the big shovels while the younger kids worked slowly (but surely) with toy shovels!

The Women & Families Program is in full swing and the team are using the Abecedarian Approach to early childhood education! They also received a visit from rangers and older school kids and together looked for minyarra: a small sweet bush onion.

Vehicle inspections are an important job for the rangers. To start, a large tarp has to be laid down before work can begin to ensures tools and parts don’t get lost. But these checks would fall monthly, sometimes daily. So it was no surprise when the rangers devised a solution — the Kunawarritji car wash!

Deep in the Little Sandy Desert, Martu walked with purposeful footsteps, weaving their way between clumps of spiky green spinifex, fanning out across the sandplain. Eyes were to the ground, reading the small indents, scrapes and scratches in the sand. And then, the tracks the rangers had been looking for: the bounding-overstep motion of the mankarr (greater bilby).

Martu have been carving it forward, with help from the Dream it Forward grant! The grant has contributed to the development of a new beginning for Martu elders to recommence carving — a practice that had been steadily eroded over the past 10 years, largely due to a lack of accessibility to carving tools.

Martu rangers have been working on bat monitoring – deploying song meters at Karlamilyi National Park and collecting the recordings for analysis. Eight species of echolocating bat were detected, including the Pilbara leaf-nosed bat (Rhinonicteris aurantia); a vulnerable species under federal and state legislation!

The partnership between BHP and KJ provides social, cultural and environmental programs to conserve and protect Martu culture, land and heritage. It has generated significant employment opportunities for Martu, primarily through a ranger program. Martu elder, Thelma Judson, was asked what this partnership has meant to her.