ABSTRACT
Australia is a continent, not a country. This land is home to the hundreds of Aboriginal homelands that we name our Countries, each with a language, culture and people. This chapter reflects upon three of the norms that underlie the international legal tradition of Australian Aboriginal Nations. They are 'narrative sovereignty', 'relationship-based citizenship' and the 'right to be human'. The legal systems of the Aboriginal Nations of Australia began in what is sometimes called the 'Dreaming'. Indigenous legal scholar Robert Williams has characterised the sustaining idea of colonialism as being that 'the West's religion, civilization, and knowledge are superior to the religions, civilizations, and knowledge of non-Western peoples'. Irene Watson concluded in her ground-breaking study of colonialism that Indigenous Peoples need to: find a new way of being, an old way of being, outside that of colonial power.
