People of Three Rivers

Rematriating Wiradjuri Living Waters

Bibliographic Data

ID24229851
AuthorsJessa Rogers (0000-0003-2651-773X, The University of Melbourne)
Year2026
Pages1-18
Publication date2026-10-13
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAustralian Feminist Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1321-7568 • E-ISSN: 1465-3303
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/08164649.2026.2744992
OpenAlexW7221693121
LanguageEN
References cited20

Wiradjuri are freshwater people whose identity is constituted through relationships with three interconnected rivers: Wambuul (Macquarie), Galari (Lachlan) and Marrambidya (Murrumbidgee), with Milawa (Murray) marking the Nation’s southern boundary. A companion article develops the freshwater ontology through which Wiradjuri understand themselves as the people of three rivers; this article extends that work by examining rematriation as the return of ancestral relationships, responsibilities and authority between Wiradjuri peoples and living waters. Situating rematriation against the lineage of concepts through which settler law and scholarship have sought to accommodate Indigenous water relations: recognition, rights of Nature, river personhood, ontological pluralism, cultural flows and Living Waters, the article argues that each operates along an axis of recognition, asking settler systems to acknowledge, include or grant, whereas rematriation shifts the axis to responsibility, returning Indigenous peoples to obligations already held within First Law and carried through the maternal line. Read through the Murray–Darling Basin, rematriation reorients water governance from rights over water toward responsibilities to water, with Wiradjuri-led governance and cultural flows as its practical enactment.

Indigenous sovereignty · Indigenous water rights · living water · rematriation · Three Rivers · water governance · Wiradjuri · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · Indigenous Cultures and History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights