Prof Anne Poelina, 13 August 2024

In the book Declaration of Peace for Indigenous Australians and Nature (Springer Nature, 2024) we invite readers to consider alternative legal futures that are rooted in respect, justice, and the well-being of Indigenous peoples and the natural environment. In a collaborative work with Indigenous, and non-Indigenous scholars, thinkers, activists and writers, this book offers a powerful call for meaningful dialogue, which we hope can inspire concrete actions to address the historical and continuing injustices faced by Indigenous peoples, while fostering a more inclusive and equitable legal framework for the generations to come.

The collaboration in the making of this book is just one illustration of ways that people, communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, can work together towards a more just and equitable nation. As has been well articulated by some, our nation cannot be said to be whole, or complete until there is a genuine and respectful reconciliation, an honest and true ‘coming together’ in a spirit of healing, repair, and trust.

Local and regional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities are already building partnerships with government departments and agencies, conservation groups, industry, and universities. Here, the focus on community led initiatives to ensure development will sustain both lifeways and sustainable livelihoods on and with Country. This is certainly the way that Kimberley organisations such as the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council (MFRC) works, see www.martuwarra.org We as Traditional Owners, Elders and Custodians, speak for this River, with people and River as a ‘single living entity’ having a right to live and flow. We govern it on a foundation of First Law, or Warloongarriy and Wunan Laws, underpinned by the concept of ancestral personhood, sacred ancestral serpent beings. Our collaborative approach to governance, based on First Law and our people’s stories, forms a strong foundation and frame for truth-telling.

Our vision for alternative forms of ecologically based regional governance embraces Indigenous ways of thinking, of human- and non-human inter-species relationality, as well as Earth rights, and offers a model for the kind of integrative and harmonising that is called for to repair, heal and nurture a fractured, fragmented and divided world. This vision and plan for decolonised governance also incorporates equitable, negotiated multi-stakeholder arrangements (polycentric) in which a plurality of voices, narratives and cultural practices come together for the greater good.

These approaches are important contributors to Australia’s regional and national security, as well as to climate security. Indigenous people’s deep and enduring attachments to our lands (Country), and rich cultural heritage, including Indigenous ecological knowledges of caring for Country, all form part of the foundation for resilience and adaptation in the face of crises such as pandemics and climate change.

A vision such as this also embraces a call for a just and equitable bio-regional governance. Taking up the urgent call for Truth-Telling, reconciliation, justice and peace, many of our communities are pursuing strategies for new economies, ones that can also help to address the ravages of the extractive-capitalist system, with its voracious appetite for exploitative and destructive practices. In collaborative engagement initiatives, Indigenous communities and organisations aim to counter the ongoing ecocide and epistemological erasure that are features of the continuing violence of the colonial-settler state and its machinery and architecture of destruction.

Our Indigenous ways of looking at things, seeing all species interconnected, the human- and the non-human, in extended kin networks and webs of relationality, creates a strong foundation for a harmonious and peaceful co-existence. With the ancient, deep and enduring relationships we have with Country, with the lands, the species and the waters, informed and underpinned by our Dreamings and First Laws, richly tapestried with story, with song and ceremony. It is a journey for all to share, for the nation to move forward together in peace, harmony and security.