Religious Freedom and Indigenous Rights: Global Perspectives

The Klamath River, which is of great historical and spiritual significance for the Yurok Tribe, flows through Oregon and Northern California (Photo: Istock).

This series provides comparative interdisciplinary analysis of indigenous spirituality and the legal challenges involved in its protection on national and international levels. Drawing on a variety of cases from the Americas, South Africa, and Australia, contributors discuss specificities of indigenous spirituality and theology, power dynamics behind the discussion of indigenous rights, the sacredness of natural objects for indigenous groups, the insufficiency of protections for indigenous believers within existing religious-freedom frameworks, and legal steps needed to strengthen these protections. This series is based on presentations given at the ICLRS 32nd Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 6–7 October 2025.

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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.

The post is the part of the Religious Freedom and Indigenous Rights series

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 Instead, such protections must come through legislative and regulatory instruments, which can be, and sometimes are, withdrawn by the federal and state governments due to political considerations.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.

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Legal Restrictions on Names of Religious Groups in Australia

Jeremy Patrick is a senior lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland School of Law and Justice.

In Australia, religious groups are largely able to operate with autonomy and with very little government oversight—including over the names they wish to operate under. This is not to say that the government imposes no limitations whatsoever but that any limitations will arise only in very specific contexts, and for the vast majority of religious groups the vast majority of the time, these hypothetical limitations are of no real concern. In this brief post, I canvas the contexts of denominational trademarks, incorporation, charitable registration, marriage ordination, direct legislative protection, and schism. This brief overview shows that, apart from church property disputes after a schism, judicial and legislative restrictions on religious group names are rare and scattered.

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