MG Corporation was established in 2006 to receive and manage the benefits transferred under the OFA to the MG people, who are recognised under Australian law as holding native title over large areas in the north of Western Australia’s East Kimberley region.
The OFA is a registered Indigenous Land Use Agreement in which MG native title holders agreed to surrender their ancestral native title rights over specific land areas in exchange for a range of social and economic benefits. Such benefits included the establishment of MG Corporation and provision of administrative funding for the organisation for ten years; the establishment of a charitable trust for community purposes; title to freehold land for cultural and community purposes; the right to acquire freehold land within areas of agricultural development; the right to negotiate Aboriginal Development Packages (ADPs) with developers in the Ord East-Kimberley Expansion Project; and structured participation in the East Kimberley economy.
The OFA provides a broad package of measures intended to create a platform for future partnerships between MG people, the State Government, industry and developers for the benefit of the MG community and the wider East Kimberley region. The OFA also seeks to address social issues which MG people attribute to the 1960s expropriation of their land interests, when Lake Argyle, Kununurra, and the Ord Stage 1 farmlands were being established without any acknowledgement of MG people’s traditional ownership of the land.
MG Corporation is committed to building a sustainable economic future for MG people beyond the life of the OFA, with a view to achieving a healthy, wealthy and culturally strong MG community.