Research Seminar - Dispatches from the US: Indigenous Water Rights are a Thing

In recent decades Indigenous rights have become a strong focus of international debate and joint institutional initiative, yet we have tended to shy away from close transnational comparison owing to differences in timelines and politico-legal context. This paper begins from the premise that on issues of such importance and urgency, country differences must be the beginning of the inquiry not the end. The paper seeks to bring to the topic of First Nations’ water rights — a critical contemporary issue for Australia — some alternative perspectives from a long and under-explored US legal history. Legal progress on these issues in Australia has been stifled by old constraints in legal thinking, political fragility and cross-jurisdictional tension. The long US story is itself controversial, and unfinished, but it is deeply enlightening and highlights the enormous long-term significance of these issues.

Simon Young is a Professor at UniSQ (School of Law and Justice/Centre for Heritage and Culture) and an Adjunct Professor at UWA. He specialises in government law and First Nations law and policy, having published several books in those fields. He has provided advice to various government, non-government and law reform bodies (in Australia and Canada), and collaborates with First Nations colleagues and communities in the fields of law and legal education. He recently returned from a Fulbright exchange in the US where he worked on water rights at the University of Wisconsin Great Lakes Indigenous Law Centre and Global Legal Studies Centre.

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