Ellena

The Aurora Internship Program provided me with the opportunity to intern in the Community Development unit of the Central Land Council. These past five weeks have given me a chance to put skills learnt throughout my education into practice, as well as extending these learnings and providing specific knowledge on complex development situations. My knowledge about the complexities of Native Title and Land Rights has also grown.
The projects I worked on involved reviewing, annotating, and creating internal documents, which allowed me to thoroughly research many of the projects within the CD Unit, such as the Uluru Rent Money Project and the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust.
I went out to communities with officers from two separate projects. Both of these experiences were incredible and gave me the chance to see projects I had spent weeks reading about. It opened my eyes to the complex place of CLC in community development here, as a kind of ‘middle-man’ between potential project partners and the communities themselves.
The entire experience at the CLC has reaffirmed my passion for applied anthropology and community development and taught me important information about the Aboriginal peoples of the Central Desert.