by Lee Palumbo
While chatting with a friend one day about the high volume of antibiotics and other nasty ingredients found in today’s cows’ milk, he asked me, “So why do you care what others eat or drink?”
I cried.
I often cry over this subject. I struggle to maintain calm composure as my friends and family carry on with the traditional western, colonial diet composed of other living creatures’ excretions and remains. I cry because I feel like a helpless bystander, just watching everyone feed themselves, each other, and their children – all of whom trust that all is well with the food system and that all is well on the land where that food is grown.
But it’s not.
I live on the land now called Australia, a phrase created by Aboriginal leader, speaker, writer, and poet and Wakka Wakka descendent, Brooke Prentis. I am an immigrant from the United Kingdom and have had all the privileges that come with being European, middle class, and educated. I am one of the many second peoples on this land, a colonial settler, living on land that has irrevocably changed since its colonial occupation in 1786.
On this land, we encounter the oldest living civilisation on the planet.[1] These first peoples have been the custodians of this land from the beginning. Contrary to colonial mythology, they were not wandering nomads. These peoples were farmers who developed practices that were complex, sophisticated, and unique to the region. They were true custodians from the very first Dreamtime creation story of the land given to them by the Creator. They developed complex and sustainable aquaculture systems, grain cultivation, and established settlements.[2] British colonials often recorded details of these farming practices and structures before destroying them, and the people who perfected them, to make way for their own imported practices and livestock farming from Europe. The land was cleared for newly arrived settlers to raise cattle on the stolen land with appropriated food and farming practices.
Colonial farming practices degraded the landscape and created what we know today as landscape with endangered wild species affected by deforestation and devastating bushfires. Bruce Pascoe, a Yuin indigenous elder explains and documents this brilliantly in his well-researched book Dark Emu. First peoples had a relationship with other creatures and a deep connection to the land. It is this connection that sustained the land and the community for over 60,000 years since the discovery of the first settlement of humans on Arnhem land in the northern region of the continent.[3] This connection was interrupted when colonisers decided to farm animals.
Sheep and cattle were imported with the first fleet and grazed on much of the native vegetation, deforesting the land to grow more feed crops. The greed of pastoralists, growing herds every year since, created mega industrial farms now producing more farmed animals than we need. We have become the third largest exporter of cows on the planet and yet our small population ranks fifty-fifth in the world. The shameful practice of live exports continues from this country, subjecting animals to cruel and terrifying conditions without food or water from continent to continent for days. Wealth is created by taking land from first peoples, enslaving them to work on the land and in the homes of pastoralists, and punishing anyone who opposed them. This country is wealthy, and the non-aboriginal population have an amazingly privileged life. The inequity is staggering.
The nation officially celebrates Australia Day on the 26th of January, to mark the arrival of the first fleet to these lands, which is also the start of the genocide – a day of deep sorrow and pain for first peoples. Armed with guns and carrying devastating diseases such as smallpox and other pandemics never before recorded amongst the people, the colonisers claimed land for themselves through the first wave, mass killings with firearms, rape, enslavement and poisoning of waterways, destroying whole clans and peaceful communities as they made their way inland from the coast. Then again through the second wave of despair, came alcoholism and the systematic removal of children from first families.[4] The church did little to protect the people, setting up missions for the remnant left and training stolen children into domestic slavery under the guise of adoption. Even before the church’s arrival on these shores, it had been backing colonial expansionism and imperialism. On this land the church worked alongside the government, facilitating the genocide and enslavement of indigenous people through segregation and so-called protection and assimilation policies. To put it simply the Christian church has systematically contributed to racism against first peoples from the first fleet.[5] We cannot celebrate a church that destroys, displaces, steals, and renames places, humans, and non-humans for the sake of expansion and profitability.
So, you see. All is definitely not right with the land and the food system now implemented.
It is unjust that unpaid farm workers strategically recruited from the aboriginal communities have yet to be paid reparations. It is unjust that foreigners and settlers on this land can farm animals and ship them live without food or water, and without consideration for climate or altitude shifts. It is unjust that this system continues to displace first peoples, depriving them of their sustainable farming practices, while also causing food apartheid and health disparities. It is unjust that we cause so much pain and suffering to those with whom we are meant to coexist and co-create under the great southern skies of the same Creator.
I live on a land with deep wounds, still unresolved from a violent occupation, and a desperate need for reparations so as to move toward reconciliation. All is not well with our land, and so much of that stems from our colonial farming practices.
As followers of the nonviolent Messiah, Jesus, is it possible for us to practice justice and peace via the foods we consume? How can the food on my table reflect the Good News of the Creator to all beings?
I am no longer part of the mainstream church, but I belong to a cohousing group of three families, attempting to live alongside each other and the community hoping to reflect the ways of Jesus. We follow monastic rhythms together through set times for prayer, food, and partying with our neighbours, and we offer hospitality at every opportunity. As people who follow the teachings of Jesus, we come from a long history of radical hospitality, Jesus often met with others over food and healing. The disciples relied on the hospitality of others to live. The early church makers were renowned for it, and that hospitality should extend to all, not just our friends (Luke 14:12). Local plant-based foods are an inclusive, healthy, and hospitable choice, rather than the colonial diet introduced to our plates via the destruction of land, humans, and other creatures.
So, yes, I cry over milk. Milk that is drunk and milk that is spilt, I cry for a land and a people who have suffered greatly just for a roast dinner or a big mac, or even a sausage on the “barbie.”
I look at my 6-year-old granddaughter, and I wonder what kind of life she will have in the future: will there still be fish in the sea, koalas in gumtrees and a liveable climate to allow her outdoors? Will she, too, cry over the milk? Or will she live in world where suffering is no longer required in order to obtain milk? She understands why we do not eat animals as food and why we abstain from milk meant for calves, but she does not understand why others consume such things. I am a preachy vegan. My friends laugh when I confess. But it is important to follow what breaks our hearts and makes us cry. It is the only way we can address the streams of oppression that contort our world and create dis-ease amongst us. I am thankful that I am not alone with this challenge, and encouraged by the work of CreatureKind, and fellow activists across the planet.
Lee Palumbo (she/her/hers) is a CreatureKind Fellow. She and her family live and work outside Melbourne in a cohousing community development. They are members of a missional based faith community, an initiative of the Baptist Union Victoria, aimed at co-creating connections and neighborliness in the newly built township. Lee also manages the family coffee roastery, grows some food, and assists with a social enterprise café in the neighbourhood. Lee has a Bachelor of Theology from Kingsley Wesleyan Methodist College (Sydney College of Divinity) and a Masters in Sustainable Community Development from Monash University. In recent years she has developed an interest in advocacy for animals, through considering how best to respond to our mandate to care for creation, and work towards the restoration of all things. Lee’s work with CreatureKind seeks to explore an Australian perspective about how people of faith can contribute to a truly sustainable food system and a better life for farmed animals through a deeper understanding of current animal agriculture.
[1] Malaspinas, AS., Westaway, M., Muller, C. et al. A genomic history of Aboriginal Australia. Nature 538, 207–214 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18299
[2] Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu. Aboriginal Australia and the birth of Agriculture. Melbourne : Scribe Publications, 2018.
[3]https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/the-spread-of-people-to-australia/
[4] Harris, John. “Hiding the Bodies: the Myth of the Humane Colonisation of Aboriginal Australia.” Aboriginal History, vol. 27, 2003, pp. 79–104. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24054261. Accessed 21 Jan. 2021.
[5] Pattell-Gray, A. The Great White Flood. Racism in Australia. Atlanta, Ga. : Scholars Press, 1998