“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 series explores the stories, knowledge, and strengths of First Nations communities — told by those living it. 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 programs.
Elders teaching and passing knowledge on Country.
This film amplifies the solutions our people are already leading — and strengthens our commitment to raising awareness to recognise and enshrine Food Equity as a Closing the Gap target.
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 from the Kuku Yalanji Nation, Bulgun Warra Tribe in Cape York and Ngati Ruanui, Taranaki, Aotearoa and the Founder and Director of the Indigenous Futures Foundation.
Over the past six years, he has worked alongside regional communities to strengthen local food systems and deliver community-led food security programs — distributing more than 700,000 meals to families while building pathways in training, enterprise, and self-determination.
Before founding IFF, Levi-Joel worked in media and storytelling with NITV and ABC3, producing films centred on identity, culture, justice and leadership. That background shaped his approach to social innovation: using narrative to shift systems, not just minds.
Today, his work moves beyond service delivery to focus on systems change — redesigning how food, funding and opportunity flow through communities. He believes true impact is achieved when communities own the infrastructure, the knowledge and the decision-making that sustain them.
Grounded in slow relationship-building and cultural authority, his philosophy is simple yet transformative: our people deserve to be nourished — in body, mind, spirit and Country — and the systems around us should be built to make that inevitable.
