Aboriginal leaders and advocates have joined together to call out commercial companies exploiting native food knowledge without adequate community engagement.
New evidence-based commentary, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, represents the collective view of six leading Aboriginal academics and one non-Indigenous researcher with expertise across bush food, traditional Indigenous medicines, policy and law.
Environmental chemist Brett Rowling and Dr Alana Gall, a research associate of ANSTO, are co-authors on the paper.
Dr Gall is a proud Truwulway and Litamirimina woman from the east/north-east coast of Lutruwita (Tasmania, Australia) who leads a program of research focussed on Indigenous medicine at Southern Cross University.
“It’s really concerning to see Indigenous knowledge being commercialised without appropriate protection, or any benefit to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People who have held this knowledge for thousands of years,” said Dr Gall.
"With our native food and medicine industry booming and set to continue to grow it’s crucial that action is taken now to close the legal gap that allows native foods and Indigenous knowledge to be used without community engagement or accountability,” Dr Gall continued.
Lead author Dr Luke Williams is a proud Gumbaynggirr man from northern NSW and a University of Queensland researcher focusing on the traditional uses of native plants for food and medicine. He said native plants are an essential part of Aboriginal cultural identity.
“Complementing traditional knowledge with Western science in an appropriate way can bring benefits for all. It is well known that to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have used traditional plants for many thousands of years to sustain themselves and their communities,” said Rowling, a a Guri Ngai man.
The paper “Levering Indigenous Peoples’ food and botanicals to improve health, social wellbeing, cultural identity and economic self-determination” was authored by academics with affiliations with the University of Queensland, University of Sydney, ANSTO, Southern Cross University, and the Public Health Association of Australia.
Content for this article was extracted from the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.
