Australian National Cuisine: Beyond the Frontiers of Taste

Abstract

Chapter Nine, the final chapter of the book, brings the focus into the contemporary era, offering concluding analysis of the potential for the development of a sustainable, nutritious, tasty, Australian cuisine that moves beyond the tropes and stereotypical narratives embedded into colonial Indigenous-settler relations about food, its procurement, production, nutritional benefit, sustainability, and enjoyment. In a pluricultural, postcolonial democracy such as Australia with its history of colonization, it is necessary for the nation to acknowledge Indigenous Australians’ loss of food sovereignty that was caused by the British taking over the lands and waterways of inhabitants. As analysis of anecdotal evidence, oral histories, and the historical records demonstrates, there needs to be recognition that Australia’s edible, endogenous, flora and fauna is embedded within a political ecology of cultural practices and individual preferences that span the Indigenous and non-indigenous populations of Australia. For all Australians to take such a perspective would create capacity within the debate about the emergence of a uniquely Australian cuisine to be able to mobilize opportunity for Indigenous Australians to develop food products into the market that are sustainable, economically viable, and developed in ways that are culturally appropriate. Organizations such as Indigenous Businesses Australia at the national level, those such as Ninti One that has a regional focus, and those such as the Victorian Koorie Business Network, have potential to work with Indigenous families and communities to develop endogenous food resources that are developed in culturally appropriate ways and are viable within a capitalist economy. Unfortunately, one of the legacies of the colonial past is that there is significant confusion in the market and amongst Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians about what an Australian cuisine might be and how much or little it would need to incorporate endogenous foods, or Indigenous knowledge about such foods. Is it, as Craw argues, necessary to recognize Indigenous cultural practices around endogenous flora and fauna in their contemporary procurement and production? Or, as was shown in examination of newcomer records, can non-Indigenous people consume endogenous flora and fauna without any interest or knowledge in Indigenous cultural practices about such foods? Part of the emergent debate about the specifics of what an Australian cuisine might be continues to revolve around the answer to these questions.