ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the long history of river management by Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory's upper Roper River. It investigates water's potentiality as a possible political foundation, reflecting on interviews with participants involved in a recent 'renewal' of the 1613 'Two Row Wampum Treaty' on the Mahicantuck/Hudson River. The book suggests that water is integral to the composition of the 'estates' or 'countries' of many Aboriginal people. It also examines conflicts over access to water and its resources in New Caledonia. The book presents an opportunity to engage with a site whose settler history is little understood by scholars. It explains that entitlement to water sites and water resources has been and continues to be established within a negotiable social field only recently subject to the standardizing discourse of economic development.
