Policy Influences affecting the food practices of Indigenous Australians since colonisation.

Tarunna Sebastian University of Technology, Sydney

Freedom from want of food, therefore, must mean making available for every citizen in every country sufficient of the right kind of food for health. If we are planning food for the people, no lower standard can be accepted.

Sir John Boyd (b.1880 d.1971) First Director General of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation

Policy Influences affecting the food practices of Indigenous Australians since colonisation.

• Aboriginal Australians face a range of health challenges which can be linked to dietary- related factors.

• Dietary practices of Aboriginal Australians emerged from historical, cultural, social and political structures in place for over the past 200 years.

Policy Influences affecting the food practices of Indigenous Australians since colonisation.

Life expectancy of Indigenous Australians

• The life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people is a national concern.

• Life style conditions such as diabetes and life style risk factors affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults and younger age groups

The poor health of Indigenous people around the globe is linked to

• Poverty • Malnutrition • Low levels of educational

attainment, and • Poor access to programs of

disease prevention.

Examination of each major policy epoch on food practices and identity

• Factors affecting Aboriginal Australians food practices during:

• Pre-colonial • Colonial • Protection and • Assimilation periods.

Pre- Colonial Food and Eating Practice:

• A study conducted in the 1970s of 200 nomadic Australian Aboriginal men described them as ‘slimly built, sinewy featherweights’ (Elphinstone

1971 cited in Gracey 1996:198). • People were depicted as

fit and slim in paintings of first contact.

Fire stick farming

• The colonial impact on Aboriginal peoples’ food practices still effect Aboriginal people’s health.

• Traditional food practices were gradually replaced by rations

• Rations were used instead of wages in exchange for labour.

• Rations comprised of flour, sugar, tea and jam.

Policies of protection and its impact on food practices

Policies of assimilation

• Communal ‘feeding’• Official ration not able to sustain

health• Privatization of cooking and

eating removing Aboriginal people from public sites of collective consumption (Morris, 1989)

[The] rationing relationship was an historic achievement… which turned Aboriginal people into paupers and robbed them of their own knowledge about food, culture and agency (Rowse, 1998)

Food was also withheld as punishment

Policies of assimilation

• Forced removal of children interrupted development intergenerational food practices and exposed children to institutional malnourishment

Industrialisation of food practices

• The industrialisation of food practices has brought about social and political change and with it changes to the diet of Aboriginal people.

Other factors affecting food practice:

• Urbanisation• Loss of traditional food practices,• Increasingly sedentary lifestyles,• Access to transportation• Changing socio-economic status • Cooking technologies,• Food storage facilities

Conclusion

• Current patterns of food consumption among Aboriginal people are linked to more than 200 years of colonial food policy.

• These approaches continue and are reflected in aspects of current food policy

Thankyou

tarunna_sebastian@hotmail.com