Taungurung Recognition Settlement Agreement area (and Registered Aboriginal Party) is bound by the Campaspe River south of Rochester in the west, the Great Dividing Range in the south and extends a long way east of the north-central region. Our Country includes the upper reaches of the Goulburn River and its tributaries, east to the Ovens River and with the northern boundary running between Rochester, Euroa and Everton (Figure 6).

Taungurung buk (people) have managed our land, forests, rivers, wetlands and floodplains for thousands of years. We relied heavily on a healthy Country and our traditional knowledge and management practices shaped the cultural landscape for us to thrive. Despite the ongoing effects of settlement and removal from our lands, our people have maintained their ancestral connection to Country. In the heart of the Taungurung identity, we find our land, forests, rivers, stories and songlines; we are an intrinsic part of Country.

Currently, water management and governance in Victoria excludes our cultural landscape and our traditional knowledge and practices. An unsustainable extraction of resources drives land and water management. Our valued species were often found lining waterways and billabongs. With the increased water demand and the effects of grazing and cropping, the habitat for these species has decreased dramatically. Harmful land-use and water extraction profit from Country’s degradation and have interrupted years of accrued ecological knowledge and practices that were applied to Care for Country.

Before contact, an essential aspect of Taungurung culture was the maintenance and harvest of food and fibre plants found in abundance along floodplains of the Campaspe, Goulburn and Ovens rivers and their tributaries, the mountains and caves of our high Country and in places of habitation and ceremony. These same species have been widely used for generations as knowledge has been passed along family lines throughout the colonial period. In particular, knowledge of our medicines aided our ancestors to survive, both physically and through the continuing practice of Cultural Lore.

The settlement aftermath is one of despair. Our Country is sick and requires attention and healing. As custodians of our land and waters, we feel there is no other time for action. The future of the catchment is at risk due to the accrued impacts of past water management decisions, river flow regulation and land use transformations which have been detrimental to riverine ecosystems.

We still feel the effects and impacts of historical social and political exclusion. Our lack of water rights highlights the flaws of water management in the colonial period and recent water reforms. Today, there is no equitable water use and ownership, and we have been historically denied the opportunity for water to heal Country as well as commercial water that would enable our economic growth. We can’t benefit from water reforms because of constraints to our participation in the water market.

Taungurung has recently gained legal and political recognition to exercise relative self-determination with signing of the Recognition of Settlement Agreement. The agreement allows us to be involved as equal and valued partners in all matters of planning and decision making regarding our land and waters and to look for our economic independence through Caring for Country. Furthermore, it enables opportunity to raise awareness of Taungurung culture as a Nation and redefine our relations with the settler society.

However, competing contemporary land use puts enormous pressure on the ecosystems which are now managed for a different set of values. A context of water scarcity and climate change configure a more complex scenario to incorporate our aspirations. In this competitive scenario, whose water values are prioritised is not merely a technical discussion but a socio-political one, one of environmental justice. The CMAs are in a challenging position where they must navigate State and Basin guidelines, community aspirations and Traditional Owners priorities and perspectives.

The recent droughts and bushfires have violently and brutally impacted our region, and then along came COVID-19. These extreme events are examples of how the future will look if we don’t address issues from the past and present. From our perspective, river flow regulation and the water market have perverse effects on the catchment and the community, not exclusively to Taungurung peoples. Their effects are mostly unobserved because of the delayed effects; and compared to the acute shocks, they get little attention from the community. At the core of the Goulburn Broken Regional Catchment Strategy should be whose water objectives are prioritised and what is genuinely sustainable for our rivers, our catchment and our community.

As stewards of Country, culturally and legally obliged to look after our land, we feel water management not only requires avoiding the mistakes from the past and redistribution of water allocations, but the prioritisation of river health and its connections. Today, the lack of Taungurung water rights is not merely an impediment to control water resources or benefit from them. It is a denial for future Taungurung generations to heal Country, heal traditional knowledge and practices and exercise our culture which is undeniably linked to our land and water.