Most of us can name one edible native Australian plant – the macadamia.
But did you know that the macadamia has several Indigenous Australian native names, including Boombera, Jindilli (or Jindill), Kindal Kindal, Bauple (or Bopple), Gyndl, and Gumbar?
What is not always obvious to consumers of native foods – aka ‘bush tucker’ or ‘bush foods’ – however, is that every bite holds tens of thousands of years of culinary history, spiritual lore and cultural significance to Indigenous Australian peoples.
While referring to edible natives as bushfood or bush tucker is not generally expressed as a discourteous term, Chris Andrews, who has been involved in the Indigenous organisation Black Duck Foods, makes the argument that the terms marginalise Indigenous foods and makes something that is unquestionably ancient into a less significant entity. Indigenous-owned organisation, Warndu, which produces and advocates for Indigenous food products have taken the same stance.
The reality of the booming native foods industry in Australia worth up to $50 million a year is that only 1% of the revenue lands back in the hands of Indigenous peoples, and less than 2% of people involved in the industry are of Indigenous origin. At the same time, numerous patents have been filed by corporations seeking to claim a level of intellectual ownership over potentially lucrative native foods, at clear conflict with the traditional Indigenous source of knowledge.
While unsurprising given that commodification is the status quo and that ‘the next big thing’ is a widespread quest, commercialisation without due credit and recompense represents a saddening continuation of the colonialism that has already suppressed Indigenous livelihood, community and identity so deeply and for so long.
Perhaps by this point you’re totally on board, but perhaps you hold some reservations. We don’t need to pay homage to the ancient Mesopotamians – who are credited with haute cuisine – every time we eat something exotic!
At the heart of this issue are genuine and understandable concerns. Patenting of genetically modified / artificially bred plant species has already been the centre of intense legal disputes over the last 20 years due to incidental cross-pollination from GMO crops over farm boundaries, leaving innocent farmers at risk of patent infringement.
There are numerous complexities of this philosophical ‘bread and butter’ argument. Since large businesses are already utilising western frameworks of intellectual property to control consumer markets at massive benefit, and given the dire need to both close the gap and create sustainable food systems, an imperfect system needs to be levelled somehow.
The question remains, what can we do to rectify this imbalance? It is instructive to learn that Australia has already committed to protecting Indigenous Genetic and Biological Resources (GBR) as a party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). However, the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization (a name which requires no further explanation) of the CBD has interestingly not been adopted by the Australian Federal government.
While the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water claims that existing domestic measures are consistent with the protocol, the reality is that existing measures are very clearly inadequate according to a hard-hitting study.
For example, only the Northern Territory and Queensland were found to have legislation adequately in line with the Nagoya Protocol, allowing parties to cherry-pick states with the most favourable legislation to conduct operations out of. Further, non-compliance of regulations concerning access to GBR delivers a small penalty of $5500, which might flip the accounts of a small lemon myrtle biscuit operation but is no deterrent for larger corporations.
And while many would think there might be some legal grounds to intellectual property of Indigenous foods from the historic Mabo v Queensland native title ruling, which preceded creation of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth), Native Title does not inherently enable commercialisation. Most attempts to secure commercial rights over non-exclusive land (when native title overlaps with public property or private land) have resulted in determinations of rights to non-commercial personal, domestic and communal purposes only.
However, since a ruling in 2013 which gave permission for a group of Torres Strait Islanders to enforce Native Title in taking for ‘any purpose’ (including commercial purposes), there have been multiple determinations with similar outcomes. While this is certainly promising, legal battles and the necessity to accommodate licensing requirements of governmental regulatory bodies (e.g. for fishing) are just more examples of immense bureaucratic hurdles that Indigenous people must overcome to return to country and culture.
Research by Dylan Laver