When the British colonised Australia they assumed terra nullius, “nobody’s land”, and aqua nullius, “nobody’s water”. In 1992, terra nullius was overturned – but aqua nullius remains.
Aqua nullius denies the existence of Indigenous peoples’ own water governance principles, laid down through ancestral “first laws”. These customary laws are carried through songlines, trade routes and ceremony, embedded in a deep reciprocal economy of sharing. First laws guide the custodianship of living waters, with attention to intergenerational equity.
