The following essay is the second in a series exploring the recent phenomenon in which a number of courts and legislatures have conferred legal personality on specific rivers (the first essay can be found here). The purpose of this series is to engage in a dialogue assessing the merits and value or such recognition, as well as possible implications. This essay is written by Dr. Virginia Marshall , the Inaugural Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow with the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance and the Fenner School of Environment and Society. She can be reached at virginia.marshall [at] anu.edu.au.
The proposed push by some individuals and groups to apply legal personhood upon rivers, and potentially extending this to other living things is counterintuitive from an Aboriginal perspective, and essentially counterproductive.
Australia is in western terms a nation state. If we measure Australia’s short history against the thousands of years of Indigenous heritage, bound as it is by birthright in a familial connection and relationship with everything on, above and below the land and waters, since time immemorial, the latter far outweighs any value flowing from propositions of legal personhood.
The Murray River in the vicinity of Lake Victoria NSW (courtesy of Paul Marshall)
Water landscapes hold meaning and purpose under Aboriginal laws. The inherent relationships of Aboriginal peoples with water are evidenced by Aboriginal creation stories, with Aboriginal identity defined through Aboriginal ontologies (Aboriginal normative values and beliefs, laws and knowledge). From an Aboriginal perspective, water is inseparable from the land; in many Aboriginal creation stories (not myths) water came first, then the land. Water is sacred and underpins Aboriginal kinship connection in birth, life and death. These traits are exemplified in Aboriginal obligations to maintain waterholes, ensure fire management (burning) practices, and monitor the health of all things within traditional boundaries and care for country. Aboriginal communities continue to seek to exercise their inherent rights and obligations as sovereign peoples, in spite of continual efforts to undermine Aboriginal property relationships, ownership of resources and ancient knowledge within contemporary Australia.
Why do Aboriginal peoples continue to fight for rights to protect country?
The majority of Australia’s High Court in Mabo v Queensland [No 2] determined that the doctrine of terra nullius (in simple terms, land belonging to no one) was not based on truth; that Aboriginal peoples did have settled laws, were sovereign, and had exercised continuing ancient traditions, customs and practices. In 2004 when Australia’s federal government legally separated water from the land, creating a market-based water regime, Indigenous peoples were not consulted. Aboriginal communities, throughout over two hundred years of colonisation, have been invisible in colonial constitutions and federalism (federation of Australia’s colonial states occurred in 1901). Australia’s Constitution affirms the invisibility of the First Peoples. Social activism (people’s movements) still run cold on restoring Aboriginal peoples’ leadership role on land, water and resource management. The title of my seminal book, launched in February 2017 by the Hon. Michael Kirby, ‘Overturning aqua nullius’ conceptualises the ongoing challenges as the various stakeholders, vested interests and governments in Australia continue to regard Indigenous ‘First Peoples’ in Australia as merely another stakeholder or a ‘special interest group’, a minority group.
The First Peoples of Australia have experienced waves of western policies and laws to remove, alienate and assimilate communities and individuals, and this western legal construct is complicit in decoupling the oldest living and continuing Indigenous culture in the world.
Why is the proposed UN Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth misguided?
The proposed declaration fails to identify the unique position of Indigenous peoples for example within the gendered environment of land, water and living things which informs and connects Aboriginal identity (freshwater peoples, saltwater peoples etc.) in ‘a web of relationships’ balance. The assumption in the ‘rights of nature’ paradigm is that all ‘beings’ seek to ‘exploit, destroy and abuse’ the earth. The concept of ‘mother earth’ is described as hierarchical in the order of all things (Art 1), above ‘beings’; separating ‘each being’ in ‘relationships’ with the ‘mother earth’.
The preamble, which refers to ‘recognition and to defend the rights of mother earth’ appears oppositional to the inherent role of Aboriginal peoples to manage and protect their country, including the lands, the waters, totemic relationships with plants and animals. The preamble constructs language that enforces restrictions on Aboriginal laws, limiting and regulating inherent Indigenous rights and obligations (Art 1(7)). Notably Art 3 presupposes that Aboriginal communities’ values, beliefs, customs and laws are not adequate to maintain obligations to care for country. Art 3(e) seeks ‘effective norms and laws’ to defend the earth, effectively dismissing existing Aboriginal norms, laws and practices. It has been stated that ‘a new generation of lawyers are searching for ways to transform the legal systems of industrialised nations to nurture a harmonious relationship between people and the non-human world’, for example through the legal personhood theory. This proposition is antithetical to Aboriginal peoples’ inherent rights and obligations as First Peoples, which have operated effectively for tens of thousands of years in Australia.
Should we be persuaded by Salim v State of Uttarakhand High Court decision?
A reading of the judgement, Sharma J. (and Alok Singh J.) in mandatory directions to the Central Government and State Governments (U.P & Uttarakhand) to co-operate to ‘preserve and conserve the Ganga and Yamuna rivers’ makes certain things clear. This is an unusual role for the courts, in view of Australia’s separation of powers. Sharma J refers to a decision whereby the Supreme Court (Yogendra Nath Naskar v Commission) held that a Hindu idol was a juristic entity (of legal personality) capable of holding property and of being taxed under a trust arrangement, and that this entity must have human guardians. Juristic persons were said to be developed due to human need (Shiromani v Shri Som Nath Dass, SC), as in the construction of corporate entities, with rights and duties, to sue or be sued. The High Court order to give legal status (to be read with articles 48A & 51A(g) ‘protection of the environment’ of the Constitution of India), accords the significance of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers to all Hindus, and the continued supply of water to industry, communities, power generation and navigation.
The concept of a legal entity of itself is not trailblazing territory. In relation to introducing and advocating for the legal personality of a river; advocating for the rights of nature on grounds that all humans over-exploit, abuse and contaminate the environment is misleading. The Indigenous peoples of Australia have a primary, unique, and inherent obligation to exercise the ownership, protection and management of the Australian environment, but Australian domestic laws and policies do not fully support Indigenous Australians in the exercise of such obligations. For example, in Australia’s blueprint for water resource use, the National Water Initiative, Indigenous peoples do not have legal certainty and only three discretionary clauses (clauses 52,53 & 54) to represent thousands of years of actively maintaining pristine waters, lands and respect for all living things. Indigenous peoples in Australia have been, and continue to be, impacted by the untruths of the doctrine of discovery – terra nullius and aqua nullius – and they continue to be invisible to those seeking to exercise proprietary rights over Australia’s rivers. For decades, Aboriginal people have struggled for land rights and native title, for truth and reconciliation and for constitutional recognition. We are not willing to see the door shut in our face when it comes to our rights and obligations to our rivers.
Further Readings
Dr Virginia Marshall, ‘Overturning aqua nullius: Securing Aboriginal water rights’ (Chapter 19) R Levy et al (eds) in New Directions for law in Australia: Essays in contemporary law reform (ANU Press, Canberra, 2017)
Dr Virginia Marshall, ‘The progress of Aboriginal water rights and interests in the Murray-Darling Basin in NSW: An essential element of culture’ (2015) 30 Australian Environment Review
Dr Virginia Marshall articulates the legal logic of truth and justice not only for bringing Australia’s water and natural resource laws in line with the exigencies of our times; by challenging the doctrines which have systematically subverted and marginalized indigenous customary law (which otherwise could and should be upheld as natural law) she sparks the necessary illumination to pursue a way forward that not only restores but supports through legal reform the ability of indigenous peoples to exercise a holistic, restorative management and protection of the productive functioning of water and natural resource systems, with the legal power to correct and reverse the extractive practices which are degrading Australia and so much of the earth’s life support system (the biosphere). The Baha’i writings state that the earth is but one country and humanity it’s citizens. This is the reality of the 21st century, and we need to progressively and proactively harmonize water and natural resource systems policy and regulatory mechanisms to bring a new standard of justice that reflects this fundamental relationship between humanity and our planet: we are one.