Indigenous water knowledge and values in an Australasian context

1. Special issue of the Australasian Journal of Water Resources (AJWR)

An appreciation of Indigenous water values and knowledge is becoming ever more important when managing water resources across the Australasian region (Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and some neighbouring Pacific Islands). The Australasian region is culturally diverse and includes people from Australian Indigenous, Melanesian and Polynesian cultural backgrounds. Indigenous knowledge has emerged over millennia of adaptation to natural climate regimes, agricultural, industrial and urban development and government policies. The region also includes a wide range of colonisation histories, democratic traditions and governance, which have contributed to a variety of ways in which Indigenous people have been engaged in water policy, governance and management. Access to water is not only managed by a diversity of mechanisms including Treaty and Settlements, Native Title and Land Rights but also includes situations where Indigenous people have been excluded from access to traditional water places, to water for sustenance and water as an economic resource.

The concept for this Special Issue came from the Australasian Journal of Water Resources (AJWR) Editorial Board meeting, and with the support of the Chief Editor, a special issue was created with the focus on Indigenous Water Knowledge and Values across the region. The AJWR is a multi-disciplinary regional journal dedicated to scholarship, professional practice and discussion on water resources planning, management, and policy. The Special Issue is an opportunity to raise the profile of emerging advances in Indigenous water science and to highlight successes in research by or with Indigenous peoples in water knowledge and values. The journal accepted abstracts and papers from across Australasia with the requirement that there was an Indigenous author as lead or co-author to ensure that the Indigenous voice was strong in the Special Issue.

The Special Issue includes research related to Traditional Knowledge and cultural values of water for Indigenous people of Australia. Moggridge and Thompson (2021, this issue) discuss the policy context and the gaps in policy and barriers to participation for Indigenous people. A need for clear and appropriate engagement with Indigenous people around water is identified, in addition to gaps in water planning through lack of rights and policy, and barriers due to lack of training and guidance for Indigenous people engaging with water policy.

The framing of cultural flows and their economics are described by Davies, Wilson and Ridges, (2020, this issue), through providing a case study of a culturally significant water body at Narran Lakes, Western NSW. In a discussion of customs and property rights, the importance of culture being considered in resource management is emphasised.

Taylor et al. (2020, this issue) move the special issue across to Aotearoa New Zealand reviewing Māori aspirations and connections regarding waimāori (freshwater) and the challenges faced in accessing water in the current allocation system. Opportunities for engagement are illustrated through a series of case studies. They propose a reframing of current policy and environmental governance in Aotearoa to a Māori way of thinking and being, thus stimulating a more caring attitude to water to protect health and well-being.

Building on the theme of incorporating an Indigenous worldview into water management, the paper Living Waters, Law First, takes the special issue across to the Fitzroy region of Western Australia. Martuwarra, Taylor, and Poelina (2021, this issue) compare the Nyikina and Mangala living water law first governance framework to the Australian National Water Initiative. Representing the centrality of place, the Martuwarra Fitzroy River is listed as the lead author! This was proposed by the co-author Poelina, a Nyikina woman who is Yimardoowarra (of the river), to recognise the river as an active, creative, and relational being. This unsettles and de-centres humans as the ‘knowers’ of knowledge. The concept of nature-based authorship was endorsed by the Editorial team for the Special Issue. The paper explores the challenges and problems of water policy and looks to the future by bridging opportunities from a living water law first perspective.

Lyons and Barber (2021, this issue) provide an analysis of the Mitchell catchment in northern Queensland that links values, rights and interests with specific water resource assessment and development considerations. The research method was based on qualitative interviews with Indigenous people considering the relatedness of those interviewed to Country, water, obligation, identity, and access. The data emphasise the strong relationship across generations with water being the key to existence.

Taking a great management focus, Caron et al. (2021, this issue) look to restoring cultural plant communities at sacred sites at Santa Teresa in arid central Australia. As one of the driest constantly inhabited areas on Earth, water in this region plays a critical role in ecologically, culturally and spiritually. The paper explores the impact of feral animals (primarily camels) on water holes and the associated culturally significant plant communities. Working with Traditional Owners, fencing was used to exclude feral animals. Recovery of the sites included spiritual and cultural recovery in addition to restoration of cultural values and vegetation.

The final paper in the Special Issue moves to the Torres Strait Islands addressing the challenge of safe drinking water in remote Indigenous communities. Hall et al. (2021, this issue) seek to determine whether the installation of water treatment infrastructure would improve drinking water quality in a Torres Strait Islander community (Warraber and Hammond Islands). Significant challenges arise when supplying drinking water for remote communities and the paper identifies ways to improve water quality through appropriate infrastructure and resources. The critical role of local advice as an input, cross-agency collaboration and staff support and mentoring to ensure cultural sensitivities are emphasised.

During the time the Special Issue was being created, Australia experienced a drought that was one of the most intense on record. As a consequence of this and failures in water management, there were two unprecedented fish kill events in the lower Baarka (Darling River, NSW). While two separate independent scientific reviews were commissioned in response, there was no Indigenous membership of either review panel (AAoS 2019; Vertessy et al. 2019). The severe drought and fish kills were followed by some of the worst bushfires on record in South Eastern Australia, with significant loss of lives, property and cultural landscapes. In New Zealand, severe drought conditions (particularly in the North Island) resulted from the seventh warmest year on record (NIWA, 2020. accessed May 2021). New Zealand also received through the cross-Tasman easterly winds ash and smoke haze from the Australian 2019/20 summer bush fires. These events have challenged the traditional Western world view that humans can ‘conquer’ nature through technology and intensive management. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Indigenous worldview, which emphasises the need to work with nature and recognises humans as a part of ecosystem, is a more appropriate framing for land and water management.

Indigenous people from the region continue to struggle with colonial settler water laws that are written to benefit the settler states (Hartwig et al. 2021; Berry et al. 2018) and the dispossession of water that this has generated. There is a movement that has enabled the Indigenous water voice along with the granting of legal rights to rivers in several areas to emerge, from localised to across the region, and the listening to those voices has been slow and the actions even slower. In March 2017, three rivers, the Whanganui River in New Zealand and the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India, were given the legal status of persons, while in 2011, a hybrid form of the legal rights for nature concept was used to protect the rivers of the state of Victoria, Australia (O’Donnell and Talbot-Jones 2018). This advancement in legal rights for rivers represents a real change in the way that society perceives and interacts with nature.

This Special Issue provides a voice for Indigenous knowledge in water management and the scholarship that has emerged around that knowledge. It emphasises research initiatives that can help to inform future water management. The hope is that by providing the opportunity for Indigenous people from across the region to be heard, it will raise their voice in the academy and ultimately celebrate the achievements, acknowledge the losses, and build on the opportunities for the future.

Acknowledgments

The guest editors would like to acknowledge Prof. Katherine Daniell and Ruben Steffens, the AJWR editorial board and Taylor and Francis, for the chance to publish such a Special Issue and the support provided to the guest editors in producing this significant issue. A large thanks goes to the peer reviewers and contributing authors for their patience and scholarship on the topic.