 I'll just start my lecture in the old-fashioned way, as lawyers do, and it certainly brings up some memories for some people here today. As is fitting for a reconciliation work lecture, I would like to trace out where we have come from, where we are now, and then spend some time looking at the path before us. On a personal level, my journey to ANU, to my appointment as ANU's inaugural Indigenous postdoctoral fellow, has been one of struggle, but also one of opportunity. Aboriginal people face many barriers when it comes to succeeding in higher education. As the 2016 review of Australia's research training system found, Indigenous students are one of the most underrepresented groups in higher degrees by research. This is an area where much more progress needs to be made, and one where I believe ANU is taking the lead. As someone who left school after year 10 and returned to further study following a music career and four children, I appreciate the opportunities that further education can deliver and value the pursuit of excellence. The pursuit of excellence has always been a hallmark of Indigenous society, where men and women of high degree were universally valued and revered. Unfortunately, when the first fleet arrived on these shores a little over 200 years ago, they didn't value the Aboriginal knowledge of this ancient land. They were willfully blind to our sovereignty and our system of laws, and they labelled our men and women of high degree as primitive and savage. My personal journey into postgraduate studies took place at ANU where I completed a Master of Laws, something that would not have been possible without the support of the late Roberta Sykes and the Black Women's Action Education Foundation. Like so many Aboriginal students, I didn't have the benefit of intergenerational wealth to propel me on this journey. Education has left Indigenous people on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder. So I wish to acknowledge the Black Women's Action Education Foundation for the vital assistance they have provided to many struggling university students like me. My doctoral research on the vital issue of Aboriginal water rights, along with my passion for law reform and justice, played a key part in bringing me to the role of Indigenous postdoctoral fellow at ANU. My doctoral research was inspired by the experience of being an instructing solicitor on a landmark abalone fishing case on the south coast of New South Wales, an experience which heightened my awareness of how Aboriginal fishing rights were being trampled, and also by my experience as inaugural executive officer of the New South Wales Aboriginal Water Trust, an experience which convinced me that Australian governments were giving Aboriginal water rights little more than lip service. My doctoral thesis lays out the case, the illegal case, and human rights case for a paradigm shift in Australia's treatment of Aboriginal water rights. But I will get to this a little later. Right now I want to credit WEEH Stanner and his family for funding the Biennial Stanner Award, presented to the best academic manuscript by an Indigenous author. It was my great honour to be presented with the 2015 Stanner Award and to receive the assistance of AYSIS and Aboriginal Studies Press to turn the doctoral thesis into my book, Overturning Aquanullius, Securing Aboriginal Water Rights. The endorsement and support given to the Aboriginal Water Rights cause by the Honourable Michael Kirby, through his forward in overturning Aquanullius, and in his speech launching it in Sydney last year, was a great encouragement. Who could fail to be encouraged by the strong endorsement of one of Australia's greatest legal minds? In no small measure, because he is someone who I have looked up to throughout my legal career, Michael Kirby was one of the High Court judges who decided the landmark WEEH case, was the Foundation President of the Australian Law Reform Commission and has exemplified a passion for law reform and justice that has inspired many of us. Indigenous Australians are the oldest living continuous culture on earth. We didn't need DNA tests to prove this. Our creation stories and our ancestral relationships to all things on country inform us. Our culture of belonging to, of obligation towards and our practice of caring for country left this continent one of the most biodiverse places on earth. Our sophisticated approach to land and water management on the driest inhabited continent protected the vast expanses of fragile soils. They've guarded the continent's waters and maintained an exceptionally high biodiversity. How much things have changed in the last 200 years. Sadly an appreciation of Indigenous culture and an awareness of the impact of British invasion on Indigenous sovereign lands and waters is still sorely lacking. For many Australian citizens, residents and tourists, such awareness surfaces only when Australia Day, Survival Day, Reconciliation Week or NAIDOC events take place attracting local and national media attention with both negative and positive responses. These events sometimes provoke challenging debates. It seems to me that the national appetite for the inclusion of the first peoples in Australia's Constitution has waned. Further entrenching the political invisibility of Indigenous peoples. In yet another lost opportunity in the process of healing, the Uluru statement from the heart was pushed aside by the governments. Once again, Indigenous Australians had their hopes crushed and their rights dismissed. But there is positive progress in some quarters. Australia's states and territories are moving towards reconciliation through the inclusion of Australia's first peoples in their respective constitutions. It is a recognition that is deeply symbolic and necessary but one that stops short of including legal mechanisms for first peoples to exercise self-determination over the day-to-day management of their lives. A positive step, albeit a small one. Without a deep and meaningful understanding of this nation's history, I don't believe it's possible to achieve national reconciliation. There simply won't be the appetite or the passion for substantial change. In his reconciliation lecture earlier this year, Peter Yu described the failure of successive national governments and parliaments to forge pathways to recognise Indigenous peoples in the nation's Constitution as a failure of Australia's body politic. I wholeheartedly agree. It is useful, I think, to draw on the experience of other First Nations that have suffered the impact of colonisation, such as Canada. I was honoured earlier this year by the University of Victoria as their 2018 Distinguished Woman Scholar, which gave me the opportunity to meet some of British Columbia's leading First Nations scholars and community leaders. Canada, like Australia, was founded on the morally and legally bereft doctrine of discovery. And legal fiction, of course, Terranullius, whereby the British crown acquired radical title to the lands already occupied. This doctrine conveniently ignored the now-established fact that legal possession of these lands by First Nations peoples dates back millennia. Like Australia's First Nations, the First Nations of British Columbia have never ceded their sovereignty. Professor John Burroughs, a member of the Chippewa of the Nahuas First Nation in Ontario and the Research Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Victoria Law School, in his definitive study and analysis of Delamouc versus British Columbia's pointed out that. It does not make sense that one could secure a legal entitlement to land over another merely through raw assertion. Professor Burroughs quotes Chief Justice Marshall of the US Supreme Court. The Chief Justice observed that any such assertion is an extravagant and absurd idea. A similar sentiment was expressed by the majority of Australia's high court in the Marbeau number two versus Queensland decision, which found that it would be repugnant to adhere to the doctrine of Terranullius. I can recommend a recent book by renowned Seth Quemic Visionary, First Nations leader and land rights campaigner, The Late Arthur Manual. In the Reconciliation Manfesto, recovering the land, rebuilding the economy. Arthur Manual says that all of the assertions and doctrines used by the colonial powers to assert sovereignty, when boiled down, can be reduced to, we stole it fair and square. Manual asserts that this theft of a continent is the crime of a millennium. In a reflection of the situation in Australia, statistics show Canadian First Nations people live an average of nine years less than non-Indigenous people. Their youth are three times more likely to live in poverty and more than ten times likely to be taken away from their families. Their suicide rates are five to six times the national average. Indigenous Canadians are less than half as likely to get a high school education and the incarceration rates of Indigenous women in Canada is eight times the national average and rising every year. Does this sound familiar? Arthur Manual writes that, Canada has apologised for forcing generations of Indigenous peoples into the sole and culture-destroying residential schools, but in reality it has only substituted jails for the schools in the forced institutionalisation of our peoples. One would need to be willfully ignorant to not know that the same dynamic is playing out here in Australia. Where racist attitudes towards Aboriginal people continue to persist. Just last week the ABC News reported that the registry of burst deaths and marriages in Perth had been redacting references to Aboriginal genealogy from birth certificates as part of its records digitisation between 2007 to 2015. Because they had deemed the Aboriginal reference on the birth certificates was offensive. The registry had adopted a practice of whiting out the term Aboriginal from birth certificates. There is much we can learn from Canada's successes and failures. Canada established its Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008, which wound up in 2015 with 94 calls to action and the publication of a multi-volume report. A key conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is that Canada's residential school system amounted to cultural genocide. It is not dissimilar to the impact of Australia's stolen generation policies we have here. You still hear commentators in the mainstream media claim that Indigenous children were stolen for their own good. The Bringing them Home report, which was tabled in federal parliament 21 years ago, concluded that Indigenous families and communities have endured gross violations of their human rights. They were an act of genocide aimed at wiping out Indigenous families, communities and cultures vital to the precious and inalienable heritage of Australia. Prime Minister Rudd's apology to the stolen generation 10 years ago was a very welcome contribution to the process of healing that started with Goff Whitlam and Paul Keating. But many of the recommendations in the Bringing them Home report are yet to be implemented. Some people may be surprised to hear that Aboriginal children are being taken away from their families in greater numbers now than in the 90s and that the rate of removal in the ACT is the worst in the country. The theme of National Reconciliation Week 2018 is don't keep history a mystery. And this is an important message. How can there be reconciliation if we as a nation refuse to face up to the truth about the impacts of invasion and colonisation on this continent? Face up to the truth about dispossession that the legislated theft of the land and water resources from the First Nations of Australia has left a legacy of poverty and disadvantage. How can there be healing without facing the truth? How can we forge a way forward together if we willfully choose to keep our history a mystery? Truth and reconciliation must go hand in hand. You don't have to look far to find some uncomfortable truths. The commitments made in Prime Minister Rudd's apology speech have been left to languish. When the report of the Royal Commission into the Aboriginal Death Syncucity was tabled in parliament 27 years ago, Aboriginal people were eight times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Aboriginal people. Today, it's 20 times more than that. The Honourable Justice Rothman of the New South Wales Supreme Court in his Honours March 2018 address on disadvantage and crime, given to the Public Defender's Criminal Law Conference, commented that the vast majority of Aboriginal people in prison are there on remand. In his reference to the High Court Bugme and Munder decisions, Justice Rothman argued strongly for the application of the Fernando principles, whereby the courts give weight to the serious social and economic disadvantage endemic in Aboriginal communities when sentencing Aboriginal offenders. In similar manner, the Gladue Principles, applied by the Canadian Supreme Court, also call on sentencing judges to give consideration to the unique circumstances of convicted persons, such as endemic poverty, substance abuse, lack of education and employment opportunities as a means to address the overrepresentation of Aboriginal peoples in the social justice system. In Andrews versus Law Society of British Columbia, 1989, the Canadian Supreme Court quoted the words of Justice Frankfurter in Dennis versus United States, 1950, that, there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals. Justice Rothman goes on to state that, it is clear that in Canada, in the United States of America and in Australia, the notions of equal justice are offended as much, if not more, by the equal treatment of unequals as by the unequal treatment of equals. Addressing the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in Australia's prison requires the severe social and economic disadvantage faced by Aboriginal people to be addressed and that the influence of this disadvantage be given weight when courts are dealing with Aboriginal offenders, especially if the offence relates to summary offences. I believe there is no case for any person to be incarcerated for a fine default. The Australian Law Reform Commission's report on the recognition of customary laws was published almost 32 years ago and none of its recommendations have been implemented. We can and must do better. While in Canada, I learned that the national and provincial governments, especially British Columbia, were investing substantial funds into an Indigenous Language Revitalization Initiative, which was a key recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as human rights obligation and a constitutional obligation under Section 23 of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A similar commitment and investment is sorely needed in Australia, where the revitalisation of Aboriginal languages is an imperative. Language is the conduit for Indigenous laws and traditional knowledge. Another significant outcome from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the significant moves by Canada's leading universities towards Indigenousization. The University of Victoria adopted an Indigenous plan 2017 to 2022, in which they have reaffirmed a commitment to enhancing educational opportunities for Indigenous students and developing initiatives and programs of education, research, outreach and engagement with an Indigenous focus. Similarly, Thompson Rivers Universities at Camloops adopted its Aboriginal Services Plan 2016 to 2019, in which it commits a priority for Aboriginal programs, services and initiatives that will improve the recruitment, retention and completion rates for Aboriginal learners. I am encouraged that ANU's Reconciliation Action Plan commits this university to building greater respect for Indigenous peoples within the university environment and institutional culture, providing support for Indigenous students attracting and retaining Indigenous interns and staff and consolidating ANU as the leader in Indigenous research of national significance, including building a critical mass of Indigenous post-doctoral researchers within the university. My personal experience at ANU confirms that these commitments are genuine. In the six months since I started here, I've had nothing but support and encouragement for my teaching and research, and that is segue into my Aboriginal Water Rights Research, the focus of the rest of this discussion. Existing Australian water policy is failing Indigenous Australians. When the Commonwealth and States formalized the Intergovernmental Agreement on the National Water Initiative in 2004, it was the culmination of a long process of an alienation, entrenching the invisibility of the water rights and interests of Australia's first peoples. Under the National Water Initiative, which provides the blueprint for Australia's water market, water can be bought, traded and sold by individuals, government or an entity, separately from land, under a market-based economic system. During this process, the powerful interest groups, farmers and irrigators, water-hungry industries, towns and cities, had their water converted into water property rights. But the water property rights of Aboriginal people were not catered for. The national water reforms had a huge impact on Indigenous people, extending and further embedding their marginalization from a crucial natural resource. In itself, this legal separation of water and land was an alien concept for Indigenous people, for whom water and land are innately inseparable, intimately connected to our sense of self and to Indigenous ontology and laws. Indigenous communities throughout remote and regional Australia continue to suffer poor water quality and inadequate water infrastructure, which impacts their health and quality of life. On this dry continent, with its highly variable rainfall, control of water has underpinned wealth generation. Since Indigenous Australians in general are the poorest, most disadvantaged people in Australia, lacking the economic means to buy water, and where native tidal water cannot be traded, opportunities for Indigenous Australians to participate in the water market are extremely limited. The Northern development of Australia raises concerns in a relationship to water access and use in the future. My research is focused on developing frameworks for incorporating Indigenous water rights into this national water initiative, that is, into Australia's laws, policies and regulations. I argue that there is a compelling case to incorporate a reserved water right for Indigenous peoples outside the consumptive pool to provide economic certainty for Indigenous peoples. Securing Indigenous water rights is an imperative. It is absolutely vital to addressing Indigenous disadvantage and is a vital step towards closing the disgraceful gap in health and wealth status. Indigenous water rights are a human rights imperative and human rights standards and principles must become the benchmark for water access, utility and use. As the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Social Justice Commissioner snated in his 2010 report, human rights are not just abstract concepts that exist in documents, such as treaties, conventions and declarations alone. They become meaningful only when they are able to be exercised. I believe that incorporating Indigenous water rights in the national water policy framework will not only give legal certainty to Indigenous water requirements and help build Indigenous cultural economies. It has enormous potential for flow and benefits to the wider rural and regional communities. In 2015 report, Connection to Country, review of the National Native Title Act 1993 Commonwealth, the Australian Law Reform Commission stated that if sustainable and culturally appropriate economic development is to occur, in many regional and remote Indigenous communities, water will be a critical component. While there is a strong legal, ethical and human rights case for Indigenous waters as a First Nations right, in practice securing this right will not be easy. I am sure most of you appreciate that there are powerful economic interests with strong political clout that can control Australia's water resources. As the 2006 UNESCO World Water Development Report pointed out, water is power and those who control the flow of water in time and space can exercise this power in various ways. Nonetheless, I believe the same political and social forces that overturned the legal fiction of Terranullius and brought about the incorporation of native title into Australia's legal framework are capable of overturning Aquanullius and spurring the incorporation of Indigenous water rights into our legal and institutional frameworks. My plea is to you is to put your energy behind the Indigenous water rights struggle. The cause is just and the time is right. Indigenous communities around Australia will welcome your support and history will acknowledge your contribution. Thank you. Thank you.