By Sufferance, Not by Right: Indigenous Spirituality and Religious Freedom in Australia
Jeremy Patrick is a senior lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland School of Law and Justice. This post is based on a presentation given at the ICLRS 32nd Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 7 October 2025.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have maintained a deep spiritual connection to the land and waterways of what we now call Australia for at least 65,000 years.[1] Although it is impossible to do justice to the importance and complexity of the legal protection of Indigenous spirituality in Australia, the short overview that follows is intended to articulate a key, if unfortunate, thesis: there is little in the way of constitutional safeguards for the religious freedom of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Instead, such protections must come through legislative and regulatory instruments, which can be, and sometimes are, withdrawn by the federal and state governments due to political considerations. As we will see, the precarious nature of these protections, which can ebb and flow with the political winds, are an unfortunate legacy of decades of unduly narrow interpretations of the Australian Constitution.
