Australia’s First nations people represent the oldest continuing culture in the world. 65,000 years of knowledge and practice, including caring for our Country: land, waters, and biodiversity underpinned by our unique customary connections between people and place.
Globally, Indigenous people are becoming recognised for their unique connection to place as well as the special relationships we have to our territories including the living and non-living elements of these places. A majority of the planet’s remaining special places including, freshwater resources have and continue to be places of long term and sustainable occupation at a time when the realisation of Indigenous peoples’ connection to country around the world is growing in the collective consciousness.
With the coming of European settlement, the link between knowledge and practice was broken as the link between Indigenous Australians and their Country was broken. This break was no accident and was first done by conquest and other means typical of the 19th century. Settlers wanted or needed the land, and settlers wanted or needed the water.
We have seen the return of land to Indigenous Australians through Native Title, state-based mechanisms and other means. From a ‘legal’ base of zero at colonisation under the fiction of Terra Nullius, we now have legally recognized rights over 57% of the Australian land mass. This is expected to reach 72% by 2030.
Water is a very different story, with less than 1% of freshwater surface and groundwater entitlements across Australia held by Indigenous Australians. This lack of access to freshwater was raised as a high priority in recent consultation on the ILSC’s strategy and we are committed to focusing on improving this access as we have done for land over the last 28 years.
Like land, we also need as a nation to recognise and celebrate the deep cultural and spiritual ties between people and waters, and the knowledge built over millennia about how to manage land and waters. Once we have taken this step, we can begin to reconnect Indigenous people to their waters and to help them to help us as a nation to manage our land and waters.