Kerrie Saunders and Margaret Cook explore Kamilaroi women’s knowledge of nature, country and history.

We are Kerrie Saunders, a Kamilaroi woman from Moree, New South Wales, and Margaret Cook, a non-First Nations historian from Ipswich, Queensland. We share a dream of putting Australian native grasses into mainstream Australian diets. For the last five years, Kerrie has studied ganalay (curly Mitchell Grass, astrebla lappacea) and guli (native millet, panicum decompositum), along with flour and food production using a combination of traditional methods and modern techniques, such as electric milling machines, ovens, and bread makers to make bread, scones, slices, pizzas, and jam drops. Through Kerrie’s business Yinarrma, we hope that one day ganalay and guli flour will be widely available for everyone’s cooking.

Ganalay and guli once thrived on the black alluvial soil plains of Moree, particularly after heavy summer rains or flooding when they produced florets containing seed. However, grazing, cropping, water regulation, and irrigation have caused their decline. In 2024/2025 we led a project funded by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to help restore Kamilaroi women’s knowledge of food and harvesting in the region. Our research explored how changing water flow regimes and agriculture had affected the Kamilaroi people, the grasses, soils and waterways in Moree.

Restoring women’s knowledge

In Kamilaroi culture harvesting grain was women’s work. Much of the food consumed by Aboriginal people was plant based, harvested, and cooked by women.  Through colonisation much of the knowledge of the grasses, harvesting, and food production has receded into memory. We have recorded the oral histories of nineteen Kamilaroi women. Informed by sensory ethnography, we asked each woman to smell a cup of wet guli as a mnemonic device or memory trigger. This opened a rich seam of childhood stories about playing cubby houses in the long grasses and catching fish and swimming in the Mehi River which, back then, was clear, abundant with animals, flowing, and fresh to drink.

In the 1970s the NSW Conservation and Irrigation Commission constructed Copeton Dam and six weirs and regulators to regulate the flows of the Mehi River and creeks. With water supply seemingly assured in this wet decade, unregulated water licenses were over supplied by about 50 per cent of the river system’s capacity. This brought cotton to the region which has become highly industrialised, corporate, and large scale, dependent on fertilisers and pesticides to sustain high yields. Kamilaroi women spoke of hearing the pumps starting as soon as there was any flow in the river and seeing the Mehi River run backwards, such was the strength of the pumps. Although restrictions have been introduced, irrigation continues and currently the largest water users in Moree Shire are irrigators (mainly cotton producers) who use on average 95 per cent of the water consumption.

Excessive water extraction, pesticides, and fertilisers, the women say, brought pollution and sickness to the rivers and Kamilaroi people. The women lamented the loss of favourite fishing holes and declining fish numbers and species. Land holdings and weirs meant swimming places were fenced off, so that now rivers rarely flow and the water is murky and stinks. Many of the women stopped swimming in the river as children “were coming home with yellow toes” and “their hair started falling out from the chemicals in the water”. They drink bottled water as the river water is no longer safe to drink. The riverbanks are bare and surviving grasses have “gone yellow from no nutrients”.

As the river’s health declined, the government introduced environmental flows designed to restore the environment. While they help, the women criticise their timing, with water released after the harvest and not when the wetlands need them. Regulated water releases have confused the fish who no longer receive the seasonal flows that trigger them to spawn. The women worry about the future of the waterways. “The river has totally changed now. It’s worn out”.

Aboriginal Knowledge and Sovereignty

Despite the degradation and water loss, guli and ganalay have survived and can flourish if watered at the right time. Kerrie has been working with local grazier, Patrick Johnston, to harvest grasses and together they are working to produce native flour. Ganalay and guli require less water than imported grasses, are gluten free, and have a higher protein content and lower glycaemic index than wheat, making them a healthy alternative.

Native grains are linked with Aboriginal sovereignty. Restoring the grasses, the women believe, will restore cultural pride in their people and offer business and employment opportunities. Working on Country improves Aboriginal mental and physical health and guli and ganalay could support healthy and sustainable diets and food systems. Native grasses can assist ecosystems as they sequester carbon and support biodiversity, erosion control and habitat.

The Kamilaroi women acknowledge the commercial potential of these grasses and the risks of cultural appropriation. A challenge is to ensure that embracing native foods is not another phase of colonisation and that Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) and social justice are respected. There are 40,000 native food enterprises in Australia but in 2022 only one percent of the produce and profits from a $81.5 million annual industry were generated by Aboriginal people. It is another form of dispossession and colonial settler accumulation of wealth. However, to realise this potential, the Kamilaroi people need access to land and water to grow grass.

The women’s stories remind us that water policy is never just technical — it is also cultural and political. Rivers are not only about flow rates or farming, they also incorporate social justice, health and respect. A rethinking in water management is needed that honours Aboriginal rights and restores ecological relationships.

Kerrie Saunders is a Kamilaroi knowledge holder. She has worked on the University of Sydney’s Indigenous grasslands project and was a researcher at the Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University. For five years Kerrie has been working on native foods, educating the wider community through her business Yinarrma in sustainable farming, environmental issues and cultural connections to Country.

Dr Margaret Cook is an environmental historian and a Research Fellow at the Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University and an Honorary Research Fellow at La Trobe University.  She has a fascination for rivers and their interconnection with humans and the environment and has been working on waterways within the Murray-Darling Basin. Margaret is a regular contributor to The Conversation, radio and television.

Copyright remains with individual authors who grant VIDA holding a perpetual, world-wide, royalty free and non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce and promote content. For permission to re-publish any VIDA blog post, in whole or in part, please contact the managing editors at auswhn@gmail.com.au