Making Waves: The Role of Indigenous Water Beings in Debates about Human and Non-Human Rights

Abstract

Rejecting nature-culture dualism, contemporary anthropology recognises the mutually constitutive processes that create shared human and non-human lifeworlds. Such recognition owes much to ethnographic engagement with diverse indigenous cosmologies many of which have, for millennia, upheld ideas about indivisible worlds in which all living kinds occupy a shared ontological space and non-human species and environments are approached respectfully, with expectations of reciprocity and partnership. As many societies confront the global chaos caused by the anthropocentric prioritisation of human interests, anthropologists and indigenous communities are therefore well placed to articulate alternative models in which the non-human domain is dealt with more equitably and inclusively. This paper is located comparatively in long-term ethnographic research with indigenous communities in Australia, alongside the Mitchell River in North Queensland and the Brisbane River in South Queensland. It draws more specifically on involvement in legal claims for water rights by Māori iwis in New Zealand; in land claims by the Kunjen language group in Cape York; and in a recent ‘sea country’ case brought against a major multi-national by the Tiwi Islanders in Australia's Northern Territory. It also makes use of a major comparative study of water beings in diverse cultural and historical contexts, and considers the central importance of water beings such as Māori taniwha and the Australian Rainbow Serpent in such legal conflicts, and in broader debates about human and non-human rights. Like other water deities around the world, these beings personify the generative (and potentially punitive) powers of water and its co-creative role in shaping human and non-human lives. They are resurfacing today with an important representational role in contemporary conflicts over land and water.