Who owns a plant?

With more and more people relishing in the flora that has nourished Indigenous Australians for more than 50,000 years, John Newtown asks who "owns" our native plants.

Saltbush hills along Stirling North, Port August in South Australia. Source: Flickr

In an article in The Weekend Australian of October 22-23, Keith Windschuttle wrote that "a radical proposition long argued by the Aboriginal political class [is] that they remain the true proprietors of the soil…"

Am I the only one to see this not so much as radical, but perfectly reasonable? Without even getting into the unbelievable assumptions of terra nullius, consider this.

When the First Fleet landed in 1788, they brought with them not only  all the food and livestock that had sustained them on the other side of the world, but also a form of agriculture that proved itself environmentally disastrous to the land they invaded.

The results of this were the removal of the Indigenous people from their food sources and methods of hunting and gathering them. And replacing the diet that had sustained them in good health for more than 50,000 years with one consisting of white flour, white sugar, tea, bully beef, salt and beer: a recipe for nutritional disaster. To add insult to nutritional injury, for over 230 years, we Europeans virtually ignored the foods that grew here.

Only now, in the first decades of the 21^st Century, are many local chefs enthusiastically championing the use of the flavours of Australian native foods: everything from old man saltbush to magpie goose is, suddenly, hot. So belatedly we have to ask ourselves a simple question whose answer is anything but simple: who owns a plant? Do the Indigenous owners have any proprietary rights over what grows on their country?

One answer to the question is that nobody owns the rights to a plant, that foods that grow in a country belong to the country rather than its original inhabitants. But that’s not how most people in the native foods industry see it.

Mike and Gayle Quarmby run a large Australian native plant nursery in Reedy Creek, South Australia. They collect their stock from the wild. But only in consultation with the elders of the communities where the plants grow.

“They show us the best plants,” Gayle Quarmby told me, “and we’ll take those plants in cuttings back to Reedy Creek to propagate.” Gathering is done in consultation with the traditional owners, and once propagated, root stock is taken back to the communities.

Adelaide chef Simon Bryant also chooses not to forage for himself. “I don’t think I have the knowledge. Whether it’s because I’m not choosing the best tasting variety or whether I don’t know if what I see is a rare example. Even when I’m taken out on country by someone who understands what they’re picking, I’m just a visitor.” And beyond respect, there is the law. The Indigenous business community is aware of this.

Paperbark barramundi and saltbush wild rice Source: Destination Flavour

Discover bush flavours in dishes such as this Paperbark barramundi and saltbush wild rice recipe by Adam Liaw. 

 

Aboriginal Bush Traders – a Northern Territory-based not-for-profit Indigenous community organisation which operates in many arenas, including wild harvest products gathered by local communities – publishes on its website a comprehensive “guide for Aboriginal knowledge holders on recording and commercialising Aboriginal plant knowledge”.

There is advice on employing field researchers, ensuring that all discussions are treated as ‘commercial in confidence’; confirming that plants taken back to a laboratory for research comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity, et cetera.

It seems to me only reasonable that European Australians acknowledge Indigenous ownership of these foods (as they do of the land) and work with them to ensure that at the very least, some of the proceeds of sales of the plants goes back to the communities.

So to return to Mr Windschuttle’s indignation that the Aboriginal political class want to be recognised as the true proprietors of the soil, perhaps it’s about time we did so. And, after 230 years of take, we begin to give. Better late than never.

 

John Newton is the author of The Oldest Foods on Earth: A History of Australian Native Foods with Recipes (NewSouth, $29.99). Lead image by Georgie Sharp via Flickr.

First Contact returns with a brand-new season. 28 Days. Six well-known Aussies. One epic journey into Aboriginal Australia. Watch episode one here or below. Ep 2 airs Wednesday 30 November and  Ep 3 airs Thursday 1 December at 8:30pm on SBS. Catch-up on episodes after the program airs via SBS On Demand here.