5 Caring for Water Country

This chapter is part of a developing project which will be updated over time. We are researching water rights, water usage and water needs in the Northern Territory where the State Government is investigating the resources required to support more industry. Water scarcity is a particular problem and there is further concern over the effect on our aquifers of the proposals by fracking industries. The aim of much previous research has been to maximise extraction without good understanding of the limits of the water system.

However the water usage by First Nations for cultural purposes is often not related to extraction or allocations but to ensuring that the resource and the area remain in its present state, that the environment and people are sustained.

From Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, 2013.© Copyright CSIRO Australia, used with the permission of the CSIRO Australia.

Work by First Nations water engineers is bringing back some of the First Nations knowledge, not to find the underground water, but as a way to understand its flow and its limitation. The work is described further in Moggride’s (2020) Aboriginal People and Groundwater.

An interesting approach for students would be to juxtapose the work of engineering a large water system, such as supply for a city or suburb, with the approach of First Nations groups now working at state and national levels. More material is provided in Moggridge et al, 2019.

While this First Nations focus is usually local, with sufficient experience on Country many aspects of the water management and conservation process can be shared across language groups and waterscapes. There are always similar features in the stories of water management. For instance, the snake Baiame is known by many different names and moves across the landscape creating the rivers.

These stories contain indicators of local river health and aspects of the Country that need to be monitored, including the signs of imminent flood and developing drought. This reflects that water is a valuable resource and people have to prepare for these changes in Country.

This value of water is often not acknowledged in our present societies, as the presence of a piped supply is assumed. However in First Nations cultures water had a spiritual significance (Water Quality Australia, n.d.) due to its high importance for life. For instance as the value of fresh potable water was high, waterways were kept free of pollution, which now often occurs due to overloading the local environment, or mass extraction of material. This approach to caring for water arose from a very different perception of the place of water as part of the animate environment:

     Recognising and affirming that water has a right to be recognised as an ecological entity, a being and a spirit and must be treated accordingly. For the Indigenous Nations water is essential to creation and many of Dreaming and other ancestral beings are created by and dwell within water. Water is a living being and should be treated accordingly.

From 2007 Echuca Declaration (as quoted in Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations, 2010),

The value of water to First Nations can be appreciated through the wealth of knowledge of the different types of groundwater and how it is used sparingly by communities. The knowledge of water management covered river water, ground water and care of sea country.

The right of access to and the care of water is a Human Right and part of the Native Title Report (AHRC, 2008). However the legal rights to access water for the care of water are rare in the settler-state legal system (Taylor et al., 2022). Despite this lack of recognition of the need to manage water with a depth of understanding, gradually First Nations knowledge of water management is becoming more widely known and accepted which is changing the broader perception of water (Harriden et al., 2022) and how we manage or respect this resource (Australian Government, 2021).

Given this situation, there is much work to be done to change the legal and practical frameworks around water in Australia so as to match international law.