“First Nation Food Sovereignty” Documentary
A story of how our Mob feed, teach, heal and care across generations.
Honouring the Way Our People Feed, Care and Connect
Food is more than nutrition.
It is culture, identity, memory, belonging, and sovereignty.
This documentary explores the stories, knowledge, and strengths of First Nations communities – told by us Mob. Through conversations with Elders, growers, hunters, cooks, young leaders, and families, we look at how food connects us to land, kinship, wellbeing, and future generations.
Food Security is a Sovereignty Issue
Across many communities, the rising cost of food, disrupted access to traditional foods, and a lack of community controlled food systems are impacting health and wellbeing.
At the same time, there is a resurgence happening. Community gardens. Bush food enterprises. Youth programmes. Elders teaching and passing knowledge on Country.
This film amplifies the solutions our people are already leading and strengthens our commitment to advocating for Food Equity to be recognised as a Closing the Gap target. (We acknowledge that while targets are not the sole solution, they are a vital starting point.)
System Change Starts with What We See, Feel, and Value
Every policy, every budget line, every funding model starts as an idea – a mental model of how the world works.
But if the idea is wrong, even the best designed system will fail.
For too long, food insecurity has been treated as a logistics problem: more freight, more vouchers, more reporting.
But what if it’s actually a storytelling problem?
Because when people truly see food as culture, care, and connection, the solutions become obvious.
The breakthrough won’t come from changing community behaviour, but from changing institutional behaviour – by making it easier for government and corporates to support Mob led systems instead of replacing them.
That’s what this film series is about. It’s not a documentary about food — it’s a documentary about thinking differently.
We Walk Alongside Communities
Indigenous Futures Foundation is working to end food insecurity in First Nations communities within our lifetime.
We do this through:
- Community-led food hubs
- Cultural cooking and growing programs
- Healthy meal distribution and support networks
- Elevating First Nations food businesses and enterprises
- Partnerships with community, corporate and government grounded in self-determination
This is not charity.
This is future-making.
Levi-Joel Tamou
Meet the Filmmaker
Levi-Joel Tamou is a Kuku Yalanji man from the Bulgun Warra Tribe of Cape York, Ngati Ruanui from Taranaki, Aotearoa and born in far north QLD. As the Founder and Director of the Indigenous Futures Foundation, his work is rooted in practical action.
Over the past six years, Levi-Joel has worked on the ground with regional communities to ensure families are fed and supported. He has helped put more than 700,000 meals on tables, but he knows that food relief is only a temporary fix. His primary focus is building what comes next by supporting communities to establish their own social enterprises in farming and hospitality. He works to create local systems that do not just provide food security but economic independence.
Before founding IFF, Levi-Joel worked in media with NITV and ABC3. His time behind the camera produced films centred on identity and justice. This taught him that if you want to shift a system, you first have to change the story it tells about itself.
Today he is focused on the mechanics of change by redesigning how food, funding, and opportunity flow through our communities. He believes that true impact happens only when communities own the infrastructure and the decisions that sustain them.
His philosophy is simple. Our people deserve to be nourished in body, mind, spirit, and Country, and the systems around us must be built to ensure that happens.
