HOW DOES AN ABORIGINAL ORGANISATION GO FROM FINANCIAL COLLAPSE TO THE GLOBAL STAGE?
Ieramugadu (Roebourne) is approximately 1,500 km north of Perth in the remote Pilbara region
BY ASAD KHAN
In 2018, the Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation Ltd (NYFL) was fighting for its life. Placed into voluntary administration, the organisation had been battered by financial instability and structural failures that left community members fearful that one of their most important institutions might collapse altogether. Headquartered in Ieramugadu (Roebourne), 1,500km north of Perth in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia, NYFL’s turning point came the following year.
The Rebuild
In 2019, at the NYFL AGM held at a hall on the banks of the Ngurin river in Iermaugadu, a new Traditional Owner board of directors to lead the organisation out of despair.
The members entrusted Yindjibarndi man Michael Woodley as Chair and Ngarluma woman Josie Samson as Deputy Chair. Their task was stark but clear: restore trust, rebuild sound governance and chart a path out of crisis. The new board responded rapidly.
NYFL Chairman Michael Woodley addressing the Centre for Future Materials, London
It was an effort driven not by external consultants or distant advisors, but by the very people whose families had fought for generations to maintain culture, rights and identity across Ieramugadu and the Pilbara.
The years that followed were defined by intense repair work. Not only had NYFL entered voluntary administration in 2018, but by 2021 its commercial arm (temporarily rebranded as Garlbagu), which had been carved out and given the opportunity to grow separately from the NYFL Trust, recorded a major financial loss under its former CEO.
By 2022, a new executive was appointed to lead the entire NYFL Group, and new systems were rebuilt, financial discipline restored, and the Foundation returned to stability and financial well-being. The Board and executive meticulously went through joint venture partnerships and eliminated those that did not meet community expectations.
Ngarluma Elders Frank Smith (left) and NYFL Director Ricky Smith (centre) with former Treasurer of WA, Ben Wyatt (right)
The Ngarluma Yindjibarndi brand was not something that would be shared lightly. It carries weight. No more would the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi names be seen on the side of mine-spec vehicles without genuine partnership.
But survival alone was never the ambition for NYFL and its members. Once the organisation had been steadied, the Board’s focus shifted to something much larger: transforming NYFL into a vehicle for long-term self-determination, economic participation and community-led systems change.
UNDRIP and Systems Change
The shift from repair to systems change commences with the appointment of Sean-Paul Stephens as Chief Executive Officer. Stephens stepped into the role with a mandate from the Board to map out and implement the strategic modernisation of NYFL’s foundations and drive structural reforms that would empower the organisation to become a genuine force in regional development and national – even global - policy.
Systems that had been patchwork were redesigned; and the Foundation began to push for a more assertive alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and brought to light the social and economic reform needed in the Pilbara. NYFL shifted from being a cautious participant in guiding policy to a confident driver of reform.
NYFL's Josie Samson, alongside Kariyarra woman Raylene Button, with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Port Hedland 2023
UNDRIP, which now underpins NYFL’s engagement drivers, is the global standard affirming the rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination, control over lands and resources, cultural preservation and full participation in decisions.
Its significance lies in the fact that it shifts Indigenous involvement from consultation to consent, setting an international benchmark that organisations like NYFL are now using to guide negotiations, governance reform and long-term community empowerment.What no one expected, however, was how quickly the organisation’s influence would stretch far beyond the Pilbara.
The International Stage
Only a few years after emerging from administration, NYFL’s leadership were leading voices on global stages. In 2023, after a fellow Traditional Owner organisation established Yindjibarndi Energy Corporation (YEC) and formalised its partnership with ACEN, one of Asia’s fastest-growing renewable energy companies, a First Nations delegation travelled to the Philippines to examine ACEN’s major wind and solar operations.
From Ieramugadu to the Phillipines, Terrence Warrie stands atop a wind turbine during YEC and NYFL’s inspection of renewables infrastructure in South East Asia
NYFL joined this visit not as a project proponent, but as a community collaborator, supporting Yindjibarndi leaders to assess how large-scale renewable energy developments could deliver meaningful benefits to Traditional Owners in the Pilbara.
The delegation’s visit to ACEN wind farms in Ilocos Norte and its meetings in Manila helped shape Traditional Owner understanding of how major renewable projects can be governed in ways that maintain cultural authority, protect Country, and deliver economic participation that extends across generations.
NYFL’s involvement focuses on the practices in South East Asia, grounded in community priorities and the lived experience of local families.
NYFL and the OECD
By 2024, NYFL was asked to represent First Nations issues at the OECD Conference. Yindjibarndi leader and NYFL Director Kevin Guiness and NYFL CEO Sean-Paul Stephens took the stage.
“When I was a little one, my parents worked for rations. No pay. For a tin of meat, sugar, flour. I saw how hard they worked, from sunrise to sunset,” Mr Guiness told the international audience.
Yindjibarndi leader Kevin Guiness and NYFL CEO Sean-Paul Stephens speaking at the OECD Conference, Karratha 2024
Mr Guiness spoke of hitchhiking 70 kilometres each way from Iermaugadu to Dampier for two years to complete his apprenticeship in his earlier years.
“No motorcar, nothing,” he recalled.
“Now I just want to see our families have a better life. We want the next generations to have more than what we had.”
NYFL CEO Sean-Paul Stephens, speaking alongside Mr Guiness, underscored this reality by pointing to Ieramugadu (Roebourne) today: a town just 14 kilometres from a major iron ore port and 44 kilometres from one of Australia’s largest oil and gas projects, yet still ranked as the most socially and economically disadvantaged community in the country according to the Commonwealth government.
“Something isn’t right,” Mr Stephens told the international forum, noting that many families struggle to put food on the table while billions of dollars in resource wealth move past the community every year.
Both Guiness and Stephens stressed to the international audience that genuine solutions to First Nations economic participation must be led by those at the heart of the challenge.
The message — grounded in lived experience and a vision for long-term, community-driven prosperity — helped shape the conference’s call for more equitable models of development, supported by Canadian First Nations leaders including Alicia Dubois and Dawn Madahbee Leach.
Co-Authorship with OECD
Through its intersection with the OECD, NYFL’s Chairman and CEO of Yindjibarndi Nation Ltd, Michael Woodley, was asked to co-author a policy paper, arguing that Indigenous peoples must move “from stakeholders to shareholders” in the resource economy.
NYFL Chairman Michael Woodley and Ngarluma man Harry Mowarin meeting with Australian National University in Canberra
Mr Woodley’s 2024 article, written with Oxford University graduate and NYFL team member and OECD representative, Bridget Donovan, set out a compelling case for shifting Indigenous peoples from passive recipients of benefit agreements to active equity partners in major resource developments.
Drawing on the Yindjibarndi experience and the history of exclusion across the Pilbara, Woodley argued that true economic participation requires Indigenous communities to hold decision-making power, long-term equity, and authority over developments on their land.It was a bold intervention on an international platform better known for national governments and global economists than for regional Aboriginal organisations
Global First nations Alliances
Over the subsequent twelve months, NYFL, realising the importance of in-depth research on the social and economic situation in the Pilbara, formed a partnership with the Australian National University. The partnership was named ‘Jila’ in language. Jila were invited to London to join the Centre for Future Materials global forum — a gathering of researchers from five universities, and including First Nations leaders from Canada, Australia, Aotearoa(New Zealand) and South Africa.
The delegation to Europe included Woodley, Stephens, and the respected Tahltan Nation resource-governance expert Nalaine Morin, whose involvement signalled the growing international network of Indigenous leaders now aligning with NYFL’s approach.
NYFL is headquartered in Ieramugadu, Western Australia, and has formed relationships and participated in international initiatives across the globe. Red = NYFL Blue = First Nations relationships and international involvement
Ms Morin reflected on the importance of First Nations people from around the world coming together for shared benefit.
“I think about the time in London often. It was an amazing experience and one that I hope we can do again. It was powerful to have nations come together from different parts of the world and share our experiences,” Ms Morin said
Nalaine Morin (left) of the Tahltan Nation, alongside Hlonipha Mokoena (second from left) of South Africa, Michael Woodley (centre) of the Yindjibarndi Nation, Wiradjuri man Noah Bedford (second from right), and Dr Nicky Drake (right) iwi (tribe) Ngāi Tahu and the hapū (subtribe) Kati Kur
Community and Members Central
As NYFL’s global profile grew, so too did its local focus. The Foundation continued to strengthen its role in community services, employment pathways and cultural heritage management, all underpinned by a Strategic Plan that moved from theory to practice.
The organisation’s evolution became an example of what can happen when governance reform, cultural legitimacy and community leadership align.NYFL’s focus on the local community is articulated as a pillar in its strategic plan, which includes a focus on Liveability.
NYFL’s focus on liveability for First Nations people has been recognised in the forthcoming Cambridge University Press book The Psychology of Place: Rebuilding Sense of Place in a Postcolonial World, authored by Dr Iain Butterworth. With the permission of NYFL Elders, the book’s final chapter is dedicated entirely to demonstrating how First Nations’ liveability implementation can support the Foundation to realise its Strategic Plan.
Dr Butterworths forthcoming book includes a chapter on NYFL's strategic objective of liveability for Ieramugadu (Roebourne), from a Ngarda-ngarli (Aboriginal) perspective, as articulated by the Ieramugadu community
Dr Butterworth argues that NYFL’s plan is one of the first in the world — and perhaps the first by an Indigenous NGO — to position liveability as a central strategic goal, redefining the concept through an Indigenous worldview grounded in Country, kinship, cultural continuity and self-determination. In 2025, this work was showcased at the International Making Cities Liveable Conference in Potsdam, Germany, where global planners, architects and researchers heard how NYFL is reframing liveability.
“NYFL is providing global leadership in exploring what liveability can look like from an Indigenous perspective,”
Timeline of NYFL's rebuild and presence on the international stage
Dr Butterworth told delegates, highlighting a model that challenges conventional planning frameworks and offers a blueprint for postcolonial place-making led by First Nations knowledge systems. What makes the NYFL story remarkable is not simply that the organisation survived.
It is that it emerged from near-collapse stronger, more strategic and more connected than at any point in its history. A Foundation that once fought for basic stability is now helping to shape international conversations on Indigenous economic participation, resource development, and the just energy transition.
Despite being on the global stage, NYFL's focus always remains on Ieramugadu and its membership. Ngarluma woman Dolly Samson showing a yield of fruit and veggies grown in NYFL's community garden
The Secret for Success?
From voluntary administration to the OECD. From a Pilbara town to global research forums. From crisis management to community-led systems change.
According to NYFL, there is no secret sauce, other than hard work, strong leadership, good governance, and remaining truly focussed on members and the community. As NYFL often states in its communications and community dialogue, members and the community always come first. NYFL is its members. When asked if the reform is complete,
NYFL Chairman and YNL CEO Michael Woodley, YEC CEO Craig Ricato, with the Australian Ambassador to the Philippines and the Australian Trade and Investment Commissioner, Manila 2023
NYFL’s answer is no. While the organisation is on a strong trajectory, its mission to achieve a more equitable and prosperous world for Ngardangarli (Aboriginal people) and the community of Ieramugadu (Roebourne) remains the measure for success. NYFL Chairman says that NYFL’s rebuild, reform and success has been grounded in community, while taking a strategic lens.
NYFL team member, and Ngarluma man, Connor Samson working in NYFL's Food Security Community Garden. Showing that international effort must be coupled with local grassroots change
“Our rebuild was never just about fixing an organisation — it was about restoring our strength as Ngarda-ngarli [Aboriginal people] and reshaping our future on our own terms. As we’ve stepped onto the international stage, we’ve had to balance two worlds: the strategic vision needed to influence global systems, and the cultural and community obligations that keep us grounded in who we are” Mr Woodley said.
“We stay focused on why we do this work — for our members, for our families, and for the next generations coming behind us”
Culture remains the bedrock for all NYFL activity. Pictured are young men who have performed a Ngunda (corroboree dance) at Goodjaralla, the Old Reserve, on the outskirts of Ieramugadu. NYFL CEO Sean-Paul Stephens (centre) and Ngarluma leader Patrick Churnside
The transformation of NYFL is a testament to disciplined governance and cultural leadership. It is a story about what becomes possible when Traditional Owners rebuild an institution in their own image, and when an organisation refuses to accept that its role is to respond to decisions made elsewhere.