Katiti Aboriginal Land Trust

The Katiti Aboriginal Land Trust is a land trust for a block of land in the southwest of the Northern Territory, Australia. It was created through the Katiti Land Claim in 1980. The trust's owners include Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara 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 and Mulga Park. The town of Yulara is excluded from the Land Trusts, and sits between the Katiti block and Uluṟu–Kata Tjuṯa National Park.

The trust is named after Katiti (English: Bobbie's Well), a natural spring located about 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) south of Lake Amadeus. This spring was first written about by Baldwin Spencer and Francis James Gillen. They visited it in 1894 on their way to Uluṟu, and recorded the name "Kurtitina" (more accurately, Katitinya). The prospecting expedition led by Lawrence Wells visited the spring in 1903, and Herbert Basedow marked it on his maps as "Curtyteena".

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 in 1920. An area of land around Uluṟu and Kata Tjuṯa 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. This law allowed Aboriginal communities to claim ownership of unused land, and to be granted freehold title 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.

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