First Nation
Food Sovereignty

A documentary from Indigenous Futures Foundation · In production · Release 2026

First Nation
Food Sovereignty

Before the ration shed and the supermarket, this continent fed its people. This film follows the Elders, growers, cooks and young people taking that food, and the right to decide it, back into their own hands.

Follow the film About the project

Filmed on Gadigal, Bundjalung, Yuin, Ngunnawal, Wakka Wakka and Lardil Country.

Delta Kay laying out native berries, greens and flowers on a bush food table at Bangalow

The film

Who decides what a community eats?

Food sovereignty is the right of a people to decide what they eat, where it comes from and who grows it. For sixty thousand years that decision belonged to the people of this continent. Colonisation took the land, the ration shed replaced the harvest, and the supermarket replaced the ration shed. First Nation Food Sovereignty asks what it takes to get that decision back.

The film travels from Aunty Beryl's kitchen in Redfern to Bruce Pascoe's grain paddocks at Yumburra, from a bush food table on Bundjalung Country to young men learning to grow on a community farm, and out to communities where a single store sets the price of every meal. It listens to Elders, growers, cooks, researchers and kids, and lets them tell it in their own words.

It grew out of Indigenous Futures Foundation's food-relief work in the Northern Rivers, where the Foundation puts more than 6,000 free meals a month on community tables. Relief feeds people this week. Sovereignty is what feeds them for the next sixty thousand years.

10+hours of interview and on-Country footage
30Elders, growers, cooks, researchers and community members taking part
6,000free meals a month delivered by the Foundation across the Northern Rivers
2026final interviews, a native foods festival and release

Voices

The people carrying the knowledge

Every story in the film is told in the voice of the person who holds it. Filming continues through 2026.

  • Lyn Harwood, Levi-Joel Tamou and Bruce Pascoe on the verandah at Yumburra

    Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood

    Black Duck Foods, Yumburra

    On native grains, tubers and the farming that fed this continent long before wheat, and on what it takes to farm that way again.

  • Levi-Joel Tamou and Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo in the NCIE kitchen holding Aunty Beryl's Cookbook

    Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo

    National Centre of Indigenous Excellence, Redfern

    On the kitchen as a classroom, and a cookbook of recipes and stories that hands First Nations food from one generation to the next.

  • Wooden bowls of lilly pilly, native raspberries and greens on Delta Kay's bush food table

    Delta Kay

    Bundjalung Nation, Bangalow

    A bush food table on Country: what grows here, what it is for, and the manners of asking before you take.

  • An Elder in a Deadly Choices jersey speaking to camera on a verandah

    Elders on Country

    Community Elders

    On remote Country, where the store and the price of a lettuce decide what families eat, and on what it took to feed people before the store.

  • Three young men in hi-vis on a community farm among banana trees

    Uncle Neil and the young fellas

    Community farm

    Growing, pruning and harvesting, and learning that connection to Country starts with your hands in it.

  • A young cook holding a plate of burgers in front of a Many Tribes mural

    The next cooks

    Community kitchens

    Young people cooking for their own mob, in halls and kitchens where food and culture sit on the same table.

Also in the film: Dr Simone Sherriff, Max and Carolyn at the University of Sydney on what the research says about food security. Still to film in 2026: Sharon Winsor, Mindy Woods and a native foods festival.

Country

Where the film was made

Filmed principally across New South Wales, with the Northern Rivers at its heart, and on Country wherever the food and the people took us.

Native berries, a banksia flower, shells, a woven bag and a painted stone laid out on a kangaroo skin
  • RedfernAunty Beryl's kitchen at the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence, and the University of Sydney
  • Bundjalung CountryBangalow bush food walk with Delta Kay, and the Northern Rivers communities the Foundation feeds each week
  • YumburraBlack Duck Foods with Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood
  • Community farmYoung men growing and learning on Country
  • CanberraInterviews, January 2026

Watch

Trailer coming soon

Who we are

Made by community, for community

Indigenous Futures Foundation Ltd is an Aboriginal-led, not-for-profit organisation with Public Benevolent Institution and DGR status. Alongside this film, the Foundation delivers emergency food relief at scale across Tweed Heads, Chinderah, Kingscliff, Ballina, Lismore, Casino, Grafton and Mullumbimby, and works with communities on the longer road from relief to sovereignty.

Levi-Joel Tamou, Kuku Yalanji and Bulgun Warra, is the film's director, producer and camera. His earlier work includes Pculture, a ten-part series for ABC3 on young people and permaculture, and Black Panthers, a documentary on Sam Watson and the Brisbane chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Before a frame was filmed, the project spent months in consultation with Elders, community leaders and native food practitioners to agree how stories would be told and whose protocols would guide them. Every participant signed on to the film knowing exactly how their story would be used.

The vision

Good food on every table, and the future that grows from it

This film is about more than what is eaten. It is about what becomes possible when a community is fed well and decides its own food.

We are working towards a future where First Nations people everywhere have access to healthy, affordable food that comes from their own Country and their own hands. Where the fresh food is grown, caught and cooked by community, priced for community, and sold in shops that community owns. Where the knowledge of Elders sits beside the skills of young people, and neither is lost.

Food is the foundation. When a family eats well, a child learns better, an Elder stays stronger for longer, and a young person has the energy to look further than the end of the week. That is the future this documentary is made for: First Nations people living long, ambitious lives filled with hope, purpose and the means to pursue both.

If you share that vision, whether as a community, a school, a funder or a screening host, we would like to hear from you.

Start the conversation

  • Two young men pruning a hedge of native shrubs on the community farm
  • A young farm worker in hi-vis holding pruning shears under a broad green leaf
  • A circle of young people gathered on the beach for a yarn

Follow the film

Screenings, community events and the release

Leave your details and we will let you know when the trailer drops, where the film screens, and how your community or organisation can host a screening.