Revised: Onshore and offshore water rights discussion
booklets, Lingiari Foundation
Rachel Armstrong
Indigenous
organisations and land owners are being asked more and more by
non-Indigenous groups and other government and non-government
stakeholders to say what Indigenous rights, responsibilities and
interests in water are. Important changes are happening in the way
that water is managed and governed, and Indigenous people need to
have a say in how they happen. The discussions presented in this
booklet have been written to help Aboriginal peoples and Torres
Strait Islanders to think about and discuss their rights,
responsibilities and interests in onshore and offshore
waters.
The booklet is
broken into three sections:
1. A general overview of
information important to understanding Indigenous rights and
interests in water.
2. Onshore waters - water
on and under the land.
3. Offshore waters -
saltwater and the inter-tidal and coastal zones.
We know that
for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples this is an
artificial distinction and there is no separation between land,
rivers and sea.
The rights, interests,
practices and uses that Indigenous peoples say they have in water
need to be talked about and understood in a meaningful way. This is
vitally important so that the best ways to advocate, recognise, and
protect these rights and interests can also be
understood.
We acknowledge the work
already conducted by the Lingiari Foundation (Inc.), in partnership
with the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission
(ATSIC), on the 2002 Onshore and Offshore water rights discussion
booklets. The discussions presented here summarise those
booklets, and also update that
work and renew the debate on water reform and how this translates
into Indigenous rights and interests.
We look forward to hearing
from you about your ideas on standards, principles and protocols
for these important matters, so that your rights in waters might be
better recognised.
You can provide your input
by going to the NAILSMA web site and visiting the
Indigenous Water Resources Management web pages. Contacts of
the people working on water can be found on this site. Or, go to
the Lingiari Foundation home page (http://www.lingiari.org/).
