Transcript of Joshua Gilbert webinar
This is a transcript of a webinar held with Joshua Gilbert.
You can watch the webinar on Zoom. The password is pCis&S
Liz:
Webinar. Ready to go? I'll start now. All good. We're started. It's live.
Beth Jones:
Started? Great. Welcome, everyone. I wish to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land that I joined you from today, the land of the Wadawurrung, and pay my respect to their elders past and present, and I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the various lands that we are all joining from today, and I pay my respect to all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are joining us online for our conversation today. Today is a significant day and that it marks the 17th anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations, an apology that acknowledged the deep pain and trauma caused by the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and communities. And so, today's a day to remember, and honour, the strength, the resilience, and the enduring culture of our First Peoples. And we remain committed at DEECA and AgVic to the process of truth-telling and treaty through the work of the Yoorrook Justice Commission and in the way that we work to support self-determination through our work in Agriculture Victoria.
And in that spirit, I'm delighted to welcome you to Agriculture Victoria's newest event series program, our barpangu yurpangu speaker series. So, this is a speaker series of curated events that are designed to build greater awareness of First Nations culture and community, First Nations experiences and views on agriculture and self-determination. So, the series provides an opportunity for staff and industry to build awareness and develop capabilities in First Nations narratives, perspectives, and thought leadership. The series also creates a broader platform for First Nations people to contribute to and engage in the narratives around agriculture and self-determination. barpangu yurpangu are Djadjawurrung words that create a phrase meaning build together, go forth together, and this phrase captures so well the aim of our work in agriculture and self-determination, and we acknowledge DJAARA for kindly providing these meaningful words for us to use in this program. The speaker series was created to deliver on our responsibilities under DEECA's self-determination strategy, Pupangarli Marnmarnepu, which guides DEECA and Agriculture Victoria's broader activities supporting self-determination.
So, you've joined us here online today where we're united by a common goal of building greater understanding of First Nations community and culture and its multifaceted relationship to agriculture, and I'm delighted to tell you a little bit about our first speaker in the series, who's Josh Gilbert. And Josh is a Worimi man with extensive experience across Aboriginal affairs, the environmental sector and sustainable agriculture. Josh is intent on leading change through sharing the stories of identity through agriculture and environmental truth-telling and has just released the book titled Agriculture Australia's Identity - an Aboriginal Yarn. He's also undertaking a PhD at Charles Sturt University focused on the concept of Indigenous modernity through agriculture. Josh's session will explore opportunities for First Nations people participation in agriculture, sharing historic elements of importance, unpacking the current state and providing an understanding of opportunities for the future, and so it is with great pleasure that I introduce Josh and thank him sincerely for his time to be in conversation with us today. Thanks, Josh.
Josh Gilbert:
Thanks, Beth, and thanks for that. Welcome. I think it's really great to hear Agriculture Victoria's work around this space. It's certainly something that I think a lot of the other states could learn a lot from and I am really looking forward to more conversations around what does Indigenous agriculture look like today and also into the future. As you shared, Beth, I'm a Worimi man. I live and work on Country up here in Gloucester on the mid north coast. I think I cross most of the agricultural sector in some ways, come from a family farm where we had beef cattle. My grandmother up until very recently was running a sheep property by herself down on the southwest slopes in New South Wales. I get to think about it in terms of what it means from a philosophical sense, and hence the PhD, thinking around what does Indigenous agriculture truly mean to us all here in Australia and what does that process look like when we think about brand agriculture both here domestically and also overseas.
I also am involved in the industry from an education sense. I run one of the biggest agricultural shows here in New South Wales for young kids who want to get involved in cattle showing, and we run that every year. It's been going for 37 years now and get to see young kids really excited about agriculture and the industry. And I also get to think about the reflection of agriculture in more of a poetic and journalistic sense in terms of the book that will be released in May this year. And then I guess internationally thinking about what does Indigenous agriculture build into our national yarn of agriculture and our trade partners. So, I get to see the full extent of what agriculture is, what it means and what the stories behind it exist and where they lie.
I want to start with a bit of a story and give you a bit more context, maybe about who I am and where I come from. This for me is a really important site, and as I said, I come from Worimi Country, and I think it's important that we have these conversations from Worimi Country. And I don't say that with any disrespect to other mob because the process of colonisation is very different and important that we listen to that locally, but here on Worimi Country, this is the first land in Australia that was colonised through the sense of modern agricultural systems. This is land that 200 years ago last year, our federal government handed to the Australian Agricultural Company with their mission at that time was to cultivate the wastelands of New South Wales. And given that they could raise a million pounds overseas in foreign investment from... A million pounds back in 1824 was quite a lot of money.
The federal government decided to gift the Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) 1 million Worimi acres. And with that process of cultivating the wastelands of New South Wales, AACo took out on this mission to undertake agricultural activity here on Worimi Country so that they could produce good quality sheep actually at that stage and export the commodity back over to the motherland. Kind of the first instance in which a whole agricultural organisation was set out here in Australia with the common purpose of trying to export commodities back to home, back overseas.
So it's with this story, the clashes that happened with AACo and the truth-telling and yarns that come out of this that I'm eternally grateful for, to be able to share this yarn with you from Worimi Country, sharing the truths that were shared to me as true and recognising that mob and also non-Indigenous people have a whole series of truths across this country. And in the majority of words that were shared by Beth earlier, and also in our words we say 'Wikoola', which means coming together side-by-side. It really is a joint journey around what we think and what we mean about agriculture here in Australia.
So, for me, as is important and culturally respectful, I want to want to make sure that I acknowledge my elders past and present on these lands, thank them for their contribution to the development really of what we mean by agriculture today. The stories that sit, well, I say beneath the trees and around the lakes and rivers here on this country that tell the truth and know the truths of what happened on this side that weren't ever recorded, and pay my respects to elders past and present on all the lands that you are joining from as well.
I also want to acknowledge like Beth did, that it is the Day of the Apology. And for me, I think it's important to recognise the role of government through that process and the process that government were conducting up until recently and almost even still today, and that that moment in time has been a way in which we can all come together to recognise some of those stories and yarns, and I want to acknowledge the people that have that as part of their story, including some of my own family and the way in which that forms who we are as people and as a society. And equally, it's 75 years today and yesterday that the Freedom Ride first kicked off here in New South Wales, and I think an interesting story around what that has meant for Indigenous rights, people and processes here in New South Wales, but also across the state.
So, while they are momentous period of reflection, and reflecting on, I guess, indigenous power and knowledge and systems and the fight and struggles that exist across these lands to try and get some of that knowledge to be appreciated and understood. So quite a big week for Indigenous affairs. Also, just quickly, there is a Q&A button on your Zoom platform, so make sure you use the Q&A, add your questions there as we go throughout. I'll answer them at the end, and do my best to try and share a bit more in depth. So, if you've got any questions, feel free to add those at any stage. So, the purpose of thinking about Worimi Country and why I think this story is so important here is because of the process of what colonisation did here, and I think it is reflective across broader society and mobs all have their own story of this and the way in which it was done.
But here on Worimi Country, we know the documentation of this colonisation effect because we had a publicly listed company. What is and self-reports as the oldest and longest-standing company, just purely company in Australia, still kind of with the same structure, and depending on who you talk to within the company, still with this very similar objective or a set of principles that guide that. So certainly, a really interesting case study as to what agriculture has been and the journey of agriculture across these lands for the last 200-odd years.
We know because of these recordings and because the journals that they kept by the archives because of this company status that AACo had a very interesting relationship with Worimi people on this land. Upon getting the million acre land grant, Robert Dawson arrived at a place about an hour and a half south of where I am here in Gloucester, and arrived with the ships and the boats, and Worimi people are recorded of having helped Dawson and some of the AACo members put together the campsite for the night. And in that very first journal that Dawson reflected in that he wrote back to the shareholders of this company, he wrote very eloquently at the bottom, "The Worimi people..." Maybe not as nicely. I think he referred to the Native Blacks, but, "The Worimi people have been very helpful in this process, and should we have a good, continued relationship, we should do everything in our power to help work with Worimi people."
And despite this decree, this kind of note that Dawson wanted to work with Worimi people, we know that the relationship turned sour very quickly. Within a matter of two or three years, Dawson and some of the other AACo members were reflecting on the fact that the landscape seemed to have been missing something that was once here, that from that first journey that they undertook onto these lands and were recording different sites as they went, there was something that had changed in the landscape just in a few years that had meant that something was lacking. And they reflected upon this conversation of how frequently bushfires or fire was seen across these lands and almost reflected that it was so important that it seemed to be lacking from this landscape. But instead of having curiosity and a good relationship with mob here on the ground, they left that idea of fire stick farming, fire management of country, and just went on with their activities of trying a variety of different Western agricultural commodities here on this land.
So, they reported of having sheep here for a long period of time. When sheep were struggling due to the humidity and pests and diseases, they quickly switched to cattle. They tried wheat farming here on the Mid North Coast, and just I guess to give you some context, it's about an hour to the beach. So, wheat did not grow very well. Neither did the cotton they tried. So, the agricultural activity was really a test bed, I guess, of what could be grown here and what was the future of agriculture going to look like in this area before it moved across the rest of Australia.
We know though that agriculture, or at least the recognition that Indigenous people here in Australia could feed and sustain ourselves for the last 65,000 years have been happening even prior to colonisation. And I put this slide up and many of you'll be aware of Uncle Bruce's work and some of the controversy that has happened out of this, and I think it's an important place to start because it very much shifts the mindset around what does Indigenous agriculture look like today? How do we recognise this history, the elements of what happened here prior to colonisation, during colonisation and even today, and really actually makes us think about what does Indigenous agriculture and what should it look like now and also into the future.
So the controversy around or the perceived controversy around Uncle Bruce's work that reflected upon some of these early journals similar to what Dawson was talking about back in 1824 when he first came to Worimi Country, was really this reflection of what was here and what lens do we project onto society and culture and how do we as people think about what we're interpreting and getting fed back. We can often overlook and there's instances of what Uncle Bruce found in Dawson's journals as well as is there in many other places across Australia, but the contention around what is Indigenous agriculture has really been caught up in this debate over what happened 200 years ago and the kind of interpretation of what agricultural systems might have been here.
We know, as I said, Indigenous people have been farming this land for at least 65,000 years and I'm specifically going to call it farming and will keep using that terminology. I'm happy to debate why that is the case. But we know the farming systems right across this country was really informed by language groups, the environment, the relationships that we had with land and also the trading ability of mob across this place with 200-odd different nations. We know there is at least six-and-a-half thousand different types of native foods here in Australia. We don't really know how they've been used, what the process has looked like and what some of the opportunities are. And on top of some of those early grinding stones that we know record that 65,000 year history, we also have instances like this. I'm sure many people have seen the Brewarrina fish traps or have heard of them.
And for me the reflection on the way in which we think about agriculture really comes down to what these fish traps represent, that somehow in the psyche of what it means to be an Indigenous person, what it means to be to have Indigenous agriculture, we get caught up in this debate around what were the systems involved and what were the conversations needed in reflection to kind of change this narrative from almost terra nullius in some ways or not just having the joys or the fruits of the environment handed to Indigenous people to actually really complex and sophisticated agricultural systems. And the reflection on Brewarrina fish traps for me provides that perfect example because we can sit down and marvel at how incredible it is now, some 200 years after colonisation, but then the first reflection of anthropologists and some of the early settlers to that region, they reflected on how lazy Indigenous people were.
That mob could just go in and kind of pick a fish up and the traps had done all this work for them without actually marveling at how incredible and how ingenious this product and system was that had been developed. And this for me really kind of provides that tension around wilderness and country, the ability of mob actually being hands in the dirt and working with agricultural systems and developing up that long-standing agricultural system that we know was developed. These days native foods forms a lot of the basis of our conversation of what is Indigenous agriculture. A few different varieties here, from gubinge or Kakadu plum as it's commonly known, lemon myrtle and Davidson plum flower. But the conversation around what does Indigenous agriculture often excludes mob from these perspectives.
And the lemon myrtle farm, for instance, that you can see in the picture, this perfectly head row actually is owned by a non-Indigenous company, and I think we need to sit in the tension that exists around that, that despite the six-and-a-half thousand different native foods that existed in Australia, the commodification, the commercialisation of bush foods has often been done by non-Indigenous people, and that the ownership of the plant breeders rights and the money getting made off native foods often flows back into the hands of non-Indigenous people. The statistic that lies behind that is less than 1% of the revenue from native foods goes back to an Indigenous person or business and 1% is a massive leap, I think. That statistic doesn't incorporate macadamia nuts, which were commercialised in Hawaii, but they're actually truly an Australian native food. So,there is kind of a tension that exists when we think about that limited scope of what Indigenous agriculture is and the way in which native foods perpetuates that.
So, the perpetuation of native foods as an agricultural model has been around for a long period of time. It actually started quite some time ago when white colonisers had taken on landscapes and during times of drought and floods and struggle, white farmers would often rely upon Indigenous people to go and find native foods or Indigenous products and bring back to the homestead and incorporate it into the meal. And the issue or the concern with that process has meant that Indigenous foods often are taken, or have for a long period of time been taken as a secondary aspect to our food systems, that they're seen as lesser because they are only kind of used during that time of struggle and drought.
In fact, our relationship with native foods is, I would say, in some ways so broken that the perpetuation of that has meant that we find Indigenous mobs across Australia still kind of promoting the benefits of many of our native foods, things that we know of such as vitamins, the Kakadu plum having the highest vitamin C of any natural product in the world, the protein that exists in some of our grains like kangaroo grass. We're stuck in this perpetuation of fighting for this meaning and the purpose and the promotion of native foods that often when we think about Indigenous agriculture, it's quite narrow.
And I use this photo of me and my dad as a kid at my grandfather's dairy farm from the early '90s to kind of reflect on the way in which I was taught that agriculture was not just bush foods, that the process of what farming is also looks like a white, conventional old white guy, my grandfather, farming dairy cows and following the clock of a dairy schedule every day of my childhood, that actually our involvement in these farming systems were happening for a long period of time and they're very different to the narrative in what we're trying to kind of fight about in terms of the native foods fight of what Indigenous agriculture is and could be.
So there's quite a bit to unpack around a definition, what this means and the way in which we perceive this in terms of our national identity and who we are as people. What I contend instead and what the nub of my research all comes back down to this quote, which was very generously given to me by one of my past supervisors, someone who I'm sure you all know actually, Stan Grant. While we were talking about this reflection on what I'd seen in my childhood and what so many Indigenous people have seen right across Australia in terms of Indigenous agriculture, Stan provided this quote to me, that an Aboriginal person or Indigenous person farming today doesn't lose their identity because of the agricultural commodities in which they're producing. We're the same people, just the people in change.
And through this journey of the PhD, Stan reflected to me the works of W.E.H Stanner, and in 1979, Stanner reflected on an Indigenous guy called Durmugan up in the north, and he... W.E.H Stanner was an anthropologist and had this struggle, I guess, of what does Indigenous culture and connection to landscape look like while also farming Western agricultural commodities. And Stanner, through his work, basically saw these two things as a seesaw, that somehow the more that Durmugan got involved in Western agricultural farming, the less Aboriginal Durmugan seemed to be to Stanner. And he reflected on the things that somehow challenged what that kind of balancing act could and should have been.
So he shared in his reflections in these anthropological reflections on Durmugan that little things like getting a TV, getting married, wearing a cowboy hat and farming beef cattle, through this process somehow meant that Durmugan was struggling or losing his Indigenous identity through this process, and I think that's the metric and the understanding of what really comes out through the conversations as to whether Indigenous people had a farming system prior to colonisation and this missing bit in the middle that we often don't talk about is what has the process been of colonisation with identity in forms through agricultural commodities. So, there's a lot to reflect on. 1979 was not that long ago and I think it's interesting those reflections by Stanner on Durmugan to see what this process is and tying up this notion of identity with Western agriculture almost as polarities is certainly something that I think needs challenging.
So, the last thing I'd just like to maybe add on the definition is that in proposing a new definition of what Indigenous agriculture is 'is that any Indigenous person that kind of meets the criteria of being a Blackfella who is doing some kind of agricultural activity is actually engaged in Indigenous agriculture'. Seems quite simple, but actually that acknowledgement that agriculture can be anything from bush foods to farming conventionally like most non-Indigenous people, that'd be beef cattle, farming or cropping, anything across that spectrum should be considered Indigenous agriculture. And as I said, it seems kind of ridiculous, but that's the kind of broadening up of what Indigenous agriculture could and should look like when we consider this space going forward. So, this kind of gives you a story as to why, I think, there's an opportunity if we take this broader perspective of what Indigenous agriculture is, what that means in terms of employment. I'm going to talk a bit about what does self-determination in this space look like and also what does land look like in this perspective.
So, as you can see here, we know that there's a massive increase in the number of agricultural jobs, whether that be an agribusiness or on farm. The problem though is that despite this increasing demand, that Indigenous involvement within the agricultural space has been decreasing pretty heavily. To tell you how bad Indigenous involvement in agriculture has been, in 1901... That's 60-odd years before we had the census that actually acknowledged Indigenous people as people. In 1901, Western Australia alone had over 12,000 Indigenous people recorded working on cattle stations and other farming commodities. Today we have less than 6,000 blackfellas working in this sector. So, we've effectively halved, over the last 100-odd years halved the number of Indigenous people from just the WA stat alone. And I'm not saying that because I know that the number of people working in agriculture has also decreased, but we've had this fundamental drop, I guess, in the number of mob who are working in agriculture or who feel safe identifying in the census as to working in the agricultural sector.
And as you'll see from the stats, Victoria is the massive red flag and just less than 1% of the agricultural workforce identifies Indigenous. And this is a really incredible and fascinating statistic for me because when I first started looking at the data and we did the analysis, I think, NT stood out as being one that would have a quite high population given the history of Indigenous cowboys and riggers up in the north. This is my assumption and base, but when I was thinking about Victoria, I thought about the progression and the truth-telling and treaty and those honest conversations that are starting to be had and thought that that would be the great opportunity for particularly in agriculture that's had got so much truth-telling to happen, be the perfect place to start telling these stories, but unfortunately that's definitely not reflected in the amount of mob working in the agricultural sector in Vic.
The other kind of interesting piece and why I think this is important is that we know the Indigenous estate is growing, that over 60%, or actually it's 58.74% of the country has some kind of Indigenous ownership or management across it that makes up this Indigenous estate. And I use this term ownership and throw it around a lot because I think we often get challenged by what does ownership look like and what does it mean, and we have this interesting relationship with it. So, if you'll give me 1%, and I can just talk broadly around 60%, we know the Indigenous estate covers 60% of Australia. The Closing the Gap commitment that every state and territory government and the feds have signed up to seeks to increase that by another 15%, which all means that the relationship of what the opportunity of agriculture provides for Indigenous people is massive.
Because currently, the stats are that we use just as much land for agriculture in Australia as what is owned or managed or has legal title over by the Indigenous estate, but yet we fund all of our efforts and have all the conversations around agriculture when at the same time the Indigenous estate per land size is equivalent, if not bigger. So, for me that's a kind of fascinating conversation that we all need to get our heads around. The relationship between Indigenous people and agriculture will have to merge very quickly as this kind of Indigenous estate grows and as mob generally start getting involved in the agricultural sector or certainly get re-involved in the ag sector. And just I thought it was important, this is a very new map, map by ABARES that kind of show what this legal title looks like across Australia. And I think it's fascinating, this growing, I guess, of co-managed and other rights that Indigenous people in Victoria have, for instance, over some of the landscape. And you'll see it's quite a chunk actually to how much land exists there.
The other thing I want to talk about is business models and that there is no comprehensive data set that exists in Australia where Indigenous people have been asked if they want to identify their business as an Indigenous business involved in agriculture. We obviously have Supply Nation like the rest of sectors, but this graph for me speaks to some of the challenges that agriculture has in comparison to other industries because of the business structures. As you'll see, the number of agricultural partnerships that exist in Australia is significantly high, that most businesses in Australia that are involved in agriculture have a partnership structure, and often at times, as you'll probably all be aware, that's a husband-and-wife partnership or partner and partner relationship. And that 50-50 breakdown of what that relationship means will mean that we'll have a disproportionately impacted number of Indigenous businesses who won't be able to call themselves Indigenous businesses with the new Supply Nation changes that are happening that will have a requirement that Indigenous businesses have to be 51, 49% ownership structured.
So because we haven't really looked at the data around what that means for agriculture specifically, because we actually don't have a growing or kind of a big group of people talking about Indigenous agriculture in this broad sense in Australia, actually we're going to have this almost dilution of the number of Indigenous businesses that might exist in the agricultural sector, or those businesses that will be able to identify as an Indigenous business because of the structure changes because of the business models that agriculture often uses. So, I think just be mindful of some of the businesses that you're coming or seeing in this space. Often at times we record certainly in the baseline CRC data that exists around what does this kind of new baseline look for Indigenous agriculture. We know most of the trust and company structures because the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation is invested in a lot of them. What is unknown is the partnership and the individual and even private company involvement in agriculture by Indigenous people because that chance to identify hasn't really come up.
The Cotton Research and Development Corporation for instance was the first one to ask its members if they want to identify through that process, and that was only last year or maybe the year before. So, the opportunities that exist there are interesting. I think we'll have this kind of emergence of Indigenous businesses who come out and identify and then Supply Nation at the same time is doing this converting of what Indigenous businesses' classification is and that will mean that we'll have almost a decrease in Indigenous agricultural businesses.
So with that in mind, I guess some of the takeaways that I think the literature tell us is that we're yet to come to terms with what the definition of Indigenous agriculture is other than a pre-colonial debate conversation and some awareness of what involvement has looked like over the last 200 years. That truth-telling through that process is important. The way in which land was colonised, who tells the truth? And obviously with Victoria having the Yoorrook opportunity to hear some of those truths are important. I also think it's worthwhile comparing some of the research and truths to other states to see how Victoria stands in terms of that national yarn.
And actually, maybe my fascinating obsession with cattle showing and other livestock shows has led me to realise that the same... Well, actually two years prior to... The Royal Agricultural Society in New South Wales had a competition at one stage for picture of a Native Black in the natural environment, and two years prior to the last known awarding of that medal at the Royal Easter Show here in New South Wales, mob at Coranderrk actually took out the best produce at the Royal Melbourne show. So that comparison, I think it kind of tells an interesting history in the way in which agriculture was used as a colonial act and what was celebrated and how throughout that journey. So that's important.
I think the growing land interest that Indigenous people have warrants a lot of attention from the agricultural sector, and we know so far that the relationship not only because of unpaid wages and stolen wages, and rapes and murders that were conducted across these landscapes for agricultural production, but also just the treatment of mob even more recently, despite having that 60% land ownership or land legal interests. There's nearly no money that goes back to Indigenous traditional owners through those agricultural businesses that take place on those lands. That power imbalance for me is super important, the way in which we think about what's going to happen there as a consequence of some of those historic and more recent actions.
And lastly, I think just in terms of that conversation around employment, that we actually have a lot to be done. And I just give you this instance, this is from the cattle show committee I'm part of, and for me, this speaks volumes to how youth, and I think, particularly young Indigenous kids are seen in the industry that we last year struggled to get any support for our agricultural activity. Well, thankfully this year we've been able to get a bit more for it, but I tell you that because I think we don't actually as an industry invest back into ourselves and show what does careers in agriculture look like.
Particularly, we don't show to mob, to young Indigenous kids, what does the career in agriculture mean for young Indigenous kids throughout their career journey, and the result in that is that we have less than five, like the number five, Indigenous agricultural graduates across every university in Australia. The numbers aren't great to start off with, but we also don't have a pipeline of young Indigenous kids coming through. So, where I think you can support young agricultural activities generally and particularly those that include young Indigenous kids and show mob that we belong in the agricultural sector, use your branding and your marketing to strengthen that narrative. I think we will get a lot out of that into the future in addressing some of those employment gaps that exist.
Lastly, because we talked about self-determination, I just want to end with this figure. $2.32 billion is the amount that we spend on agricultural research across Australia every year. This is how much we pump through our research and development corporations. It doesn't really speak to how much money we spend at universities and through state government organisations as well, so it's probably higher than this. But to date there has been a lack of Indigenous projects that go through the research and development corporation opportunities so that we actually have Indigenous-funded research. I could probably name, and there's really only just a handful of specific Indigenous projects that have been done by the RDCs, almost none in grains, which is surprising given all the work of Black Duck Foods and some of the other organisations. We've had a handful of projects from Meat and Livestock Australia.
And what self-determination means for me in this space is how do we actually carve out some of this funding and actually hand to an Indigenous agricultural research and development corporation. And this is a model similar to what happens in the US, but provides us a really good opportunity of actually saying how do we use this bucket of money and actually funnel into Indigenous agricultural research in that broad understanding of what that means so that we can get the best results to build Indigenous agriculture into the future?
So, there's a lot of opportunities I think will come from that. I know Victoria government as well as all the other states have signed on to their National Statement of Indigenous Agriculture, and I hope through the consultation, the facilitation of an Indigenous agricultural research and development corporation or actually just self-determining Indigenous agricultural research has come up through that process, because this provides for me the best opportunity for us to continue testing and continue building what Indigenous agriculture is now, but also could be in the future. And particularly with that land perspective, provides a really great opportunity for us to rebrand and redevelop what Indigenous agriculture is and also what agriculture is in Australia.
So, the last thing I probably leave you with is if we can acknowledge the role of Indigenous people over the last 65,000 years, incorporate that narrative through riding on the sheep's back the narrative of what makes up brand Australia and agriculture today. I think we provide the best opportunity to think about Indigenous involvement in agriculture, and that Brand's agricultural piece will only be strengthened by acknowledging that entirety rather than just looking at the last 200 years.
So that's my kind of yarn, that's the story of what Indigenous agriculture means to me, where I think it will head, and yeah, I look forward to seeing if you have any questions around that. I can also share some academic papers that support all of those concepts, and certainly, if you're looking for a bit more of the yarn and narrative, my book will be out in May that we'll talk about that as well. But yeah, if you've got any questions, feel free to throw them in the Q&A, or otherwise, that might be me. I'm not sure. Liz, did you...
Liz:
Put my camera on. We'll give it a couple more seconds for people to put their questions in. Hopefully everybody can use the function properly. Here's one. Can you see that one, Josh?
Josh Gilbert:
I can, yeah. Thanks, Kit. How is drought considered managed by First Nations producers and what could we learn? I think for me the narrative around drought is important. I think there's a whole farming agri- system or agri-farming system model kind of conversation around how do you actually have a better relationship with land generally and see opportunities beyond just the farm gate or the back boundary fence to have a broader conversation of how we facilitate that resilience, I guess. So, part of its actually the farming system and model, part of it is actually listening and respecting and responding to landscape better, and I think the increased awareness that we have in natural indicators and actually hearing some of those perspectives and stories are really important to building what that resilience process looks like. And I think lastly, the other bit is research. Where we can facilitate Indigenous research around drought and resilience in systems, I think will actually have a lot more opportunities.
And that needs to be self-determined because currently the process around drought research and all research kind of tries to affirm what Indigenous people already know. Rather than letting us run trials and running research on building upon our knowledge within the Western agricultural system, it kind of reaffirms what mob know and kind of ticks it off and says, "Oh, yeah. Blackfellas might know what they're talking about," rather than kind of doing that next important step of research. So yeah, where we can funnel resources, funding and effort into Indigenous lab research, I think will get the best benefits and how we should then share those with Western agricultural commodities or commodities more broadly, I think, is a question around how do we build the better relationships between Indigenous agriculture and Western agriculture as two camps, I guess, in that picture. So I hope that answers your question, Kit.
Leon. Have I looked at and interacted with other Indigenous communities for insights as to how Indigenous agriculture could better be integrated? Yeah, I've spent quite a bit of time looking particularly at the US. Their agricultural system in my view is probably at least 40 if not more years ahead of ours in terms of Indigenous agriculture. The similar book to Bruce Pascoe's for instance... Not that this is the only indicator, but the similar book to Bruce Pascoe's was written in the US in 1987 by William Cronin called Changes in the Land, and really set that principle that Indian agriculture in the US can be seen in that entirety, that it wasn't just farming buffalo, that it was farming beef cattle and involved in that kind of whole broad sense of agriculture and agricultural production as well.
So certainly, there's a lot of learnings from the US. They've also kind of got the RDC model off the ground already. In the '80s, the Intertribal Agricultural Council, the IAC in America, sued the federal government for racist agricultural policy on one and ended up with a massive bucket of cash that has been involved in funding Indigenous agricultural research and also funding Indigenous producers to build their brands, build their perspective. So that's kind of been the multi-pronged approach that's happened there, and I think provides us in Australia with a bit of a framework as to what models might exist to help support Indigenous producers going forward.
And lastly, sorry, I think New Zealand provided a really fascinating insight for us as well here. The kind of New Zealand approach is that if you're a Maori beef farmer, then that is Maori beef. That narrative just connects and happens where we haven't really got that in Australia yet. And because of the way in which Maori have built the economy in New Zealand, their involvement in agriculture is very different. So, Fonterra, one of the big dairy producers or processors in New Zealand, their executive are now learning how to speak Maori because mob over there are some of the biggest owners of shares. So that power imbalance has just happened economically, and that's been a really fascinating journey I think around what that might look like in terms of building economies, but also, I think, a really interesting nexus between mob involvement and agriculture, and if you are now one of the major shareholders, I think that produces a really interesting relationship. So, I hope that answers that, Leon.
Catherine, you asked about increasing Indigenous graduates. Yeah, so there's less than five right across Australia. Some of the things we've been doing to try and boost that, one is just really simply providing scholarships so that mob who do think about agricultural careers get involved. So, at Charles Sturt Uni for instance, we've made a case of providing scholarships for mob who go and study there. There's a piece around just the promotion and the branding, and I think agriculture at large and all the many facets that build up agriculture need to get better at branding and showing that Indigenous people belong in the sector so that it's not just when you start sharing your promotional material with glossy catalogues of who's on the front cover, that mob can actually see other mob and can read about other mob and see that we belong in that space rather than what often happens is it's kind of old white guys because that's reflective of what the current demographic is, and actually that alienates Indigenous people's involvement. And I think that there's so much work around that branding.
The last thing I'd say is that we need to really be honest around what the relationship of Indigenous labour in agriculture has looked like. In the '60s and '70s, when the equal wages decision came in place up in the Northern Territory, the Northern Territory Cattlemen's Association were quoted on the front page of the NT newspaper by saying that Indigenous people were lazy and that results within Indigenous people... Sorry. So, the NT Cattlemen's Association argued and got through as policy to pay Indigenous workers as slow workers for a period of three years to transition into equal wages, and the result of that was just kicking mob off stations and never being involved again. So that history is really recent and really real, and I think we need to have some really honest conversations around that and the racism that still exists in the ag sector. So, I hope that answers that Catherine.
Gabrielle asked, do I think there's a correlation between participation and land ownership? I do, but I think the opportunities that exist for us to build that needs some more careful attention. I don't think it's a strong correlation between... Well, actually I'll answer it this way is that we don't know how many Indigenous people are farming in terms of business owners. The data is about employed in agriculture. So, I think there's some work to be done around what does private Indigenous land ownership look like in Australia so that we can really understand participation. And I often joke that the best source of private land ownership in Indigenous agriculture is doing a search on the ABC website to look at old news stories. So, there's a lot of work to be done there so we understand the size and scale of what Indigenous agriculture really is, and then I think the way in which we unlock landscapes to boost the number of First Nations involvement is important as well.
So currently for any mob or actually non-Indigenous people as well, to get a loan in the agricultural sector, you need a 40 or 50% deposit to buy any farm over 100 acres, and we as Indigenous people struggle with the intergenerational wealth that hasn't transferred because of the way in which land was taken for agriculture originally. So, it is kind of building and working with banks particularly and government institutions as well around what does the pathway to farm ownership look like, so we can also increase land ownership and also participation. I think I'm right on time. AK, feel free to email me on... My email address is just on my website. Feel free to email me around cultural safety. I spend a lot of time thinking about Indigenous employment and doing research on that as well, so feel free to email me and I'll make sure I answer that question as well. But I'll hand back to you, Beth.
Beth Jones:
Thank you so much, Josh, and we're grateful for you taking that question away. And it was just a privilege to be a part of this session today, Josh. We're just very grateful for you generously sharing with us your story, your reflections, your study, and your insights, and for me, you've given us much to reflect on, including some confronting statistics and reality as we further our work in agriculture and self-determination. I just think that there's enormous opportunity obviously for Indigenous people in terms of the sector, and to do this, there's such a breadth for us in terms of how we deepen our understanding of what Indigenous agriculture is but really understanding the barriers and the challenges. And you talked today about some of the business models and the broader business environment, how we create those funding opportunities for research and development seem such sort of critical fundamental things for us. And I think the other bit that really resonated for me today was just your call out of the importance of continuing honest conversations to go forward.
So, Josh, thank you very much, and my thanks to Liz and Jodie and our AgVic Self-Determination Subcommittee for this series and for their commitment to continuing these important conversations. So, as we roll out our speaker series, we're very keen to hear ideas and topics for future events, so please bring those forward. And Josh, you again, we're really grateful for you, your willingness to continue the conversation for people who might have further questions via email today.