FISH has been working with the remote Aboriginal community of Bawoorroga in the Kimberley Region of WA to grow traditional foods and teach bush skills since 2018.
The Bawoorrooga Community is a place of cultural leadership – a well-known meeting place for traditional healing, Indigenous art, and knowledge of Country and homeland.
In 2018, the community planted a ‘food forest’ orchard of 400 plants, of 30 species with support from FISH. In 2022, in collaboration with Phoenix Academy, FISH delivered a horticulture program to expand Bawoorrooga’s orchard and nursery. As well as gaining valuable hands on horticultural skills, participants completed units towards their Certificate II in Workplace Skills.
Since its establishment, Bawoorrooga Community has regularly hosted Aboriginal youth groups (with a focus on support for juvenile offenders) where participants are taught traditional bush skills, spirituality and connection to land.
“You get healed from homeland – it’s a safe place. That’s why we came back here – for our kids to be safe… We want to be self-sufficient on our homeland – show the government we can do it, to be independent …. While we’re up here on our homeland we can control things like diabetes. We go out fishing, hunting, eating bush food, cleaning up, always active.”
