By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Oct 3 2023 – Growing up in Sydney, Kalkani Choolburra, a Girramay, Kuku Yalanji, Kalkadoon and Pitta Pitta woman from Far North Queensland, would frequently travel with her family up and down Australia’s eastern seaboard. Her grandfathers and uncles would bring fresh catch of dugong, her favourite bush food, and she would go hunting for the short-necked turtle with her aunties and female cousins.

The traditional or subsistence hunting of dugongs and turtles has been an important part of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous Australians) people’s social and cultural lives. Its meat has been a vital source of protein for these communities, who have sustained themselves on the native flora and fauna for thousands of years.

Now, national and international chefs are incorporating some of these native Indigenous produce – notably Kakadu plum, Davidson plum, lemon myrtle, wattle seed, quandong, finger lime, bush tomato, muntries, mountain pepper, saltbush – into their dishes ranging from sushi and samosa, pizza and pies to cakes and muffins.

These quintessentially native Indigenous ingredients are also being used in condiments, relishes, sauces, and marmalades and infused into chocolates, teas and beverages for their unique flavours and textures.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest and recognition of the nutritive and medicinal properties of native Indigenous plants and fruits. Professor Yasmina Sultanbawa, Director of the ARC Training Centre for Uniquely Australian Foods at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, recalls taking lemon myrtle to her lectures a decade ago. She would crush the leaves and ask her students to smell and identify them.

“They didn’t know what it was back then, but now they immediately recognise it as lemon myrtle,” Sultanbawa tells IPS. “The market for native Indigenous foods is growing because it is rich in nutrients. For example, the vitamin C content in Kakadu plum is about 75 times more than in an orange; folates (a natural form of vitamin B9 or folic acid) and fibre in green plum is much higher than in a mango; and kangaroo meat has only 2 per cent fat and a high concentration of conjugated linoleic acid and omega 3.”

In a study co-authored with Dharini Sivakumar, Sultanbawa argues that including native Indigenous foods in the diet could help reduce malnutrition.

“Legumes like wattle seed are low in carbohydrates and have a very high content of protein, fibre, zinc and iron comparable to chickpeas. Wattle seed is also a great functional ingredient for adding value to other foods; for example, it can be incorporated into breads made with wheat flour. What makes native Indigenous foods attractive is that you don’t have to add a lot of it to get the nutritional benefit,” she adds.

A 2019-20 market study of Australia’s native foods and botanicals industry by researchers at The University of Sydney, supported by Australian Native Foods and Botanicals (ANFAB), forecasted the native food sector would grow to 40 million Australian dollars (about USD 25,2m) in farm gate value, A$100m (about USD 63,1m) in middle market value and A$160m (about USD 101m) in total retail value by 2025.

A spread of Lilly Pilly, Davidson Plum, Finger Lime marmalade and traditional Aboriginal bread, Damper, which is made by crushing a variety of native seeds into flour and then baking the dough in the ashes of a fire. Credit: Neena Bhandari/IPS

Besides being used in traditional and modern cuisine, many of these native Indigenous botanicals are being used in cosmetics, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries. For example, the vitamin C-rich, pink-red native Lilly Pilly fruit has good astringent properties that boosts collagen production within the skin. It is used today in a variety of anti-ageing skincare products.

The COVID-19 pandemic craze for superfoods and television cooking shows, such as Australian MasterChef, has also contributed to the increasing popularity of native Indigenous foods.

They can now be found on grocery superstore shelves. According to a spokesperson for Coles Group Ltd., a leading Australian retailer, “We currently work with nine Indigenous-run businesses that sell products with native ingredients, including Kurrajong Kitchen Oaklees original crackers, Yaru still mineral water and Seven Season Green Ant gin, on our shelves.”

Recently, The Coles Nurture Fund awarded Indigenous-owned family business Walaja Raw Bush Honey a grant of A$330,000 (about USD 208,470) to create a new, medicinal grade, premium Melaleuca honey that is sustainably made in the West Kimberley region on Yawuru Country (Country is a term used by Indigenous Australians to describe the lands, waterways and seas to which they are connected through ancestral ties and family origins).

Although the demand is growing, supply is limited because much of the native Indigenous produce is currently wild-harvested.

“Native foods have never been cultivated to be mass produced. They grow now as they’ve grown since the beginning of their time, culturally and sustainably. It’s best left like that,” says Choolburra, who is the Aboriginal Programs Coordinator at the Botanic Gardens of Sydney.

As Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Joe Morrison says, “Bush foods (food native to Australia and historically eaten by Indigenous Australians) are a fundamental part of Indigenous identity and our traditions that span thousands of years of connection to Country.”

But climate change presents a growing challenge with extreme weather conditions, including frequent storms, soil erosion, salinity in fresh water and ocean acidification threatening the ecosystems supporting native flora and fauna.

Choolburra says, “We (Indigenous Australians) are adapting our sustainability practices to meet the challenges of climate change, which is impacting everything in various ways. For example, many areas now facilitate cultural burns (Indigenous fire practice) in order to manage land and provide nutrients. In many cases, the production or harvesting of native foods is left to local communities in order to sustain the amount of quality produce.”

She occasionally leads the Aboriginal Bush Tucker Tour, which provides visitors from across the world an opportunity to learn about the traditional knowledge and cultural significance of native Indigenous flora and its many innovative uses.

On a cool, wet Sydney day, as we walk along the rich foliage in the Botanic Gardens, she plucks the long, flat green leaf from the native Lomandra plant, a vital source of food and survival and referred to as the ‘corner shop’ in some Indigenous Australians’ cultures and shows us how it can be woven to make baskets.

Pointing at the Dianella bush, she relates the old practice when children were told to hide in it – if they got lost. The Dianella’s sharp-edged leaves would repel snakes, and the children could attract attention by blowing in the hollow base of the leaf to make a whistling sound. The edible blue-purple berries, with tiny, nutty seeds from some of the Dianella species, are rich in vitamin C.

However, she warns that like anything consumed in large quantities, some of the popular nutritious plants, such as warrigal greens, used as a substitute for common spinach, and the sandpaper fig could cause diarrhoea or vomiting if eaten too much.

As the native Indigenous food industry grows, experts say, there is a need to enhance Indigenous communities’ participation to ensure they reap the benefits. “Australia needs to brand and market native Indigenous foods as its authentic cuisine. This will foster cultural knowledge about our Indigenous heritage and biodiversity,” Sultanbawa tells IPS.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Lansana Gberie
GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct 3 2023 – On 14 June, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued his flagship annual report, Global Trends: Forced Displacement 2022. It states that by the end of 2022, the number of people displaced by war, persecution, violence and human rights abuse had dramatically increased by 19.1 million — the biggest increase on record — reaching a total of 108.4 million.

This record-breaking displacement resulted mainly from the war in Ukraine and the eruption of conflict in Sudan. Ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, in Africa’s Sahel region and elsewhere also contributed, as did prominent natural disasters related to climate change.

Rush to conflict, slow to solution

In the report, High Commissioner Filippo Grandi was right to blame this tragedy on people who “are far too quick to rush to conflict, and way too slow to find solutions,” leading to such “devastation, displacement and anguish for each of the millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes.”

On Monday 15 May 2023, the Member States of IOM elected Ms. Amy Pope as its new Director General.

Yet, to blame the perpetrators of such conflicts is not to absolve the rest of the world for responding so appallingly to such displacements. This is inevitably irregular or illegal migration. On the day that the UN report was released, as many as 600 men, women and children perished needlessly when a human smuggler’s boat, Adriana, capsized off the coast of Greece.

In the following month of July, news photographs showed 27 bodies of African migrants along with dozens of inebriated figures stranded along the Libya-Tunisia border. A few weeks later on 21 August, Human Rights Watch reported that border guards of an important Middle Eastern country had carried out “widespread and systematic” abuse of hundreds of African migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross its border between March 2022 and June 2023.

That country has rejected the allegation as false. If the evidence proves otherwise, then we could consider this an extreme example of “a kind of grim and tragic monotony,” the phrase used by the American Quaker humanitarian Louis W. Schneider in 1954 to characterize the world’s aggressive attitude toward unwanted migrants.

Lansana Gberie

Secure borders, safe passages

Perhaps more pernicious, because more subtle and more easily replicable elsewhere, is the growing practice by wealthy countries of providing training, logistical coordination and other high-tech support to poorer countries so that those poorer countries can forcibly prevent migration to the rich ones.

Linked to such pernicious support and coordination is the recent migrant boat tragedy off the coast of West Africa, after patrol boats chased a fishing boat carrying migrants. Maneuvering in pitch darkness to escape, the migrant boat lost its way and struck rocks off a popular beachfront in Dakar, Senegal, killing at least 16 people.

No doubt those countries have legitimate, and probably even humane, reasons for their robust efforts to stop this kind of irregular and dangerous migration: thousands of young Africans have died over the years trying this perilous route. And state sovereignty requires secure borders.

Still, it is hard to shake off the impression that staunching illegal migrant flows is a greater priority than helping desperate young people — often displaced by conflict and ecological disasters — to more secure and prosperous destinations.

The issue is not just a matter of moral consideration. It is a hugely complex problem, clearly one of the great global challenges of our unequal world, and one without an easy fix. Even so, the world must find a more humane and effective way of addressing it.

Humane management of migration

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was founded in 1951 to “help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people.”

The vision is ennobling, and IOM takes its mission seriously. The organization is currently made up of 175 member states, operating in 180 countries around the world (including my own, Sierra Leone). It employs thousands of people from diverse backgrounds in fulfilling this mission.

In March this year, as chair of the governing council of IOM, I visited two African countries where IOM has a significant presence. My first stop was Morocco — Rabat and Casablanca — where, during two days in March this year, I met with migrants, staff of IOM, senior government officials, diplomats and civil society organizations working with migrants.

Morocco is a critical migration hub — a source country, a transit point, and increasingly, a destination country for migrants. It combines border security arrangements with richer countries to its north with its own efforts to accommodate migrants, though perhaps with a lopsided provision of resources between the two.

Because of Morocco’s strategic location, the African Union in 2020 established the African Migration Observatory (AMO) in Rabat. Headed by an Egyptian diplomat, Ambassador Amira Elfadi, the observatory could potentially assist in monitoring events such as the tragedy at the Tunisia-Libya border. But when I met Ms. Elfadi, she had no staff yet. The AMO needs support for operations as extensive and energetic as those in Kenya.

The most effective combination

I had wide-ranging conversations with IOM staff in both countries, in town halls organised by local IOM leaders. Passion for the work of the organisation was very strong. Passion combined with strong technical knowledge and an eagerness to engage with migrant communities and local authorities at all levels — which I found stronger in Kenya — makes for greater effectiveness.

In May, by resounding vote and unanimous acclamation, IOM elected Amy Pope as its director general. She is a resourceful and energetic American who embodies this combination of passion, knowledge, and enthusiasm for engaging with staff at all levels, with all governments and local authorities, and with migrant communities.

A veteran migrant defender, Ms. Pope is the first woman to head this important organization since its founding 72 years ago. In her vision statement, she committed to a “people-centred” approach, defining this as a commitment to “the migrants, vulnerable people, and the communities IOM serves, IOM’s member states and its workforce.”

Since becoming deputy director of IOM over two years ago, Ms. Pope has consistently pursued this vision with a passion rare in the staid corridors of Geneva power offices. She is now one of a handful of pioneering women to lead important international organizations in Geneva, which hosts a few dozen. All of them assumed their positions within the past four years. It has been a refreshing change.

A novel leadership of a global organization grappling with a large global challenge tends to come with high expectations. It is both the attraction and a pitfall of progressive change. Either way, it will not detract from Ms. Pope’s commitment to posit that she will be as successful only in so far as the world wants her to succeed.

With the extraordinarily grim developments heralding her tenure, the world must embrace her “people-centred” approach. A failure to do so could mean unending calamities like the ones described above.

Dr. Lansana Gberie is Sierra Leone’s Permanent Representative in Geneva. He is Chair of the Governing Council of International Organization for Migration.

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