A Wadi Wadi Traditional Owner launched legal action on Thursday challenging the Victorian government's approval of a floodplain engineering project at Nyah on the Murray River.
Traditional Owner Vince Kirby says works associated with the project are understood to be imminent and, if they proceed, will harm culturally significant sites and landscapes, including waterways, camping grounds, ancestral burial sites, shell middens, earthen ovens, scar trees, and fish traps.
Mr Kirby, represented by public interest lawyers at Environmental Justice Australia, will argue that the approval process failed to properly identify, assess and protect Aboriginal cultural heritage and did not involve adequate consultation with Traditional Owners before the plan was approved.
He is seeking to challenge the approval of the Management Plan for cultural heritage at the site, as he says it allows activities which risk permanent harm to culturally significant sites and ancestral remains on Country. He will also argue that the approval process breached requirements under the Aboriginal Heritage Act and failed to properly consider rights protected by human rights legislation.
"The mighty Murray River is my lifeline. That water runs through my veins. It keeps me alive. All the wetlands and creeks keep us alive and keep all our animals, and birds alive. It is the source of our well-being," Mr Kirby said on Thursday.
"The Murray River is our source of life. It and all the billabongs that come off the river provide all our food and all that sustains us.
"We've looked after these rivers and wetlands forever. My grandmother grew up here and now I take my great grandchildren there. We have always camped out at Nyah. It was where we went to be on Country and enjoy our connection to Country."
Mr Kirby said he wanted to protect the sites for future generations.
"I don't want to take my grandkids to my beautiful rivers and the places we used to camp and have to explain why there is a giant concrete regulator in their river," he said.
"The whole process for approving these projects has shown no respect for my people. They can't do this project without creating harm to the wetlands, the fish, the wildlife, and the heritage of the Wadi Wadi people."
The project is part of a broader Murray-Darling Basin "water offset" scheme that would use levees, pumps and regulators to divert water to select floodplains, rather than restoring natural river flows.
Environmental Justice Australia lawyer Elke Nicholson said the Nyah floodplain is "rich in ancient and living cultural heritage and deserves protection".
"Instead, the (Victorian) government has authorised a construction project that will create permanent and irreversible harm to these places," she said.
"For a project like this, the government is required to properly consult Traditional Owners. Instead, our client says the consultation was cursory and treated his cultural heritage as something that did not meaningfully involve him.
"This case is about our client's human rights and his distinct cultural rights as an Aboriginal person to maintain his spiritual relationship to the land and waters of Nyah and to pass on traditional cultural practices to future generations."
Ms Nicholson said Mr Kirby is also seeking to "hold government to account to properly assess and protect Aboriginal cultural heritage and to genuinely consult with those for whom it matters most - the Traditional Owners of the site - in this case the Wadi Wadi people of the Murray floodplains".
