As Indigenous ingredients become popular in mainstream cooking, food producers say Indigenous people should benefit

Bodalla Dairy Shed owner Sandra McCuaig, on NSW's South Coast, has been using native ingredients such as saltbush, wattleseed, lemon myrtle, quandong and pepperberry in her dairy products since 2011.

In that time, she has seen the popularity for the products boom.

"People are only just beginning to take an interest now they are on television and in newspapers, cooking shows and magazines," Ms McCuaig said.

"It has become fashionable to try them."

She grew up on a farm in the NSW Riverina, exploring on horseback and learning to see the resources around her as food and medicine.

"I was used to trying these things and I found it amazing other people hadn't," she said.

"I am only beginning to get some knowledge - that the Aboriginals have had for so long."

Ms McCuaig has seen prices for Indigenous ingredients skyrocket with growing demand, but fears the money isn't going into the pockets of the Traditional Owners and knowledge holders of the ingredients.

In 2017, Tasmanian pepperberry, which Ms McCuaig loves for its "sweet warmth with a distinctive strong flavour" cost $80 per kilogram. Now it is $180 per kilogram at best.

"Indigenous people are not, as yet, getting much financial benefit from this," Ms McCuaig said.

"We need their help to further our knowledge of how these plants can be used."

However, she has seen new businesses starting up selling ingredients that she said were "a bit of a rip off" and didn't give back to Indigenous communities.

Founder and CEO of Ngaran Ngaran Cultural Awareness and proud Yuin man Dwayne Bannon-Harrison has been closely watching the growing popularity of Indigenous ingredients, and thinks the upturn in popularity is a good thing.

He is also co founder of Mirritya Mundya Indigenous Twist and uses native ingredients in his pop-up food trailer and immersive dinner experiences.

"Of course there are positives to our ingredients becoming more popular," he said.

"You're getting the right plants and fruits and proteins and nuts back in the ground of this country that has been pasteurised and farmed."

However Mr Bannon-Harrison said measures had to be put in place to ensure some of the benefits of the boom returned to Indigenous people. He fears they will be left behind as the popularity of their traditional foods grew.

"We know western society is returning back to Indigenous ways of knowing to be able to repair what damage has been caused," he said.

"We have to be conscious about moving forward and who gets the benefit."

He has seen a big increase in growers in recent years and welcomes non-Indigenous people to producer ingredients, so long as they are giving back to the community.

"It's a part of the intellectual property," he said.

"Until 1967 we were considered flora and fauna and the irony is flora and fauna is going to be sold for some dollars to be exported.

"They can come in and grow it and make big bucks, but who benefits from that?

"We Indigenous people don't have the capital, we don't have the resources, we don't have the land acquisition to keep up.

"Who is growing it and what are those growers going to give back to the community and First Nations people?"

He said initiatives such as the Supply Nation website, an online database of Indigenous-owned businesses, were a positive step and "helped people find us", however he believes more needs to be done.

"I want to see our community benefit off our foods which have been pasteurised and destroyed for two hundred years," he said.

He would like to see giving back to Indigenous community as a compliance factor for growers in the industry.

"Just as a business has to have insurance, so they would have to also be giving back in some way to the community," he said.

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He accepts any solution would look different from community to community.

It could be, for example, a community garden and café growing native ingredients and educating customers and where the local First Nations people can harvest what they need at a reduced price.

"It's a dance of treating each other properly," he said.