European colonisation, law, and Indigenous marine dispossession: historical perspectives on the construction and entrenchment of unequal marine governance

Abstract European colonisation played a fundamental role in Indigenous marine dispossession and the entrenchment of unequal state-dominated governance regimes across diverse bodies water. This article charts this process, utilising examples from waters communities globe that experienced disparate forms dispossession. These span between sixteenth twenty-first centuries traverse Caribbean to Oceania. long historical context is necessary interrogating how has produced access space, resources, decision-making different ways through methods time which continues day. One article’s main contentions out vastly differently each locale it only with deep highly localised study heterogenous impacts ongoing legacies on rights, governance, specific Peoples local can begin be grappled with. While rights spaces resources have received some affirmation within recent international legal instruments, including protection customary tenure aquatic there key constraints surrounding definitions, representations, jurisdictions or ‘customary’ as they been codified ‘recognised’ national interstate frameworks. led challenges need navigated again order attain, claim, protect jurisdictions. As outlines, emergence these issues intrinsically tied terrestrial spaces. To understand struggles, we pay close attention entanglements law, colonialism, past present.