Reclaiming Ancient Trade
First Nations trading routes have existed on this continent since time immemorial. When Europe and Asia had the Silk Road and Spice Trade, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had sacred pathways and songlines.
Songlines trace astronomy and geographical elements from ancient stories - a way of mapping Country. In the deep past, they intersected at significant sites where certain materials, such as valuable red ochre, were found in abundance. They guided ancient trade and were the blueprint of this continent’s first economy. Our first business sector.
But the business sector is constantly changing and evolving. While colonisation has seen us mostly excluded from the mainstream economy for the past two centuries, today First Nations people are reclaiming our space in business. We’re using business as a vehicle for self-determination, and we’re using social enterprise to tackle this generation’s biggest social and environmental crises.
A social enterprise is a business devoted to positive, purposeful change. Set up to solve problems, social enterprises exist to create more value than they capture. Like First Nations community, the social enterprise sector prioritises collaboration and collective care over competition and individualism.
First Nations people have an intuitive desire to care for Mob, first. It’s because of this innate collectivism that a lot of Blak businesses, even when they don’t self-identify as a social enterprise, have a social agenda. Whether it be creating opportunities for our most vulnerable community members, maintaining and celebrating our diverse cultures, or caring for the environment and land, Blak businesses are emerging as leaders for sustainable change.
In the last year alone, Blak businesses have shown a degree of adaptability comparable to that of our Old People, who prospered on this continent against unimaginable odds. Their remarkable strength and versatility to withstand wildfires, droughts and glacial maximums, is the same strength and versatility that allows us to thrive today - despite invasion and all its side effects. Being innovative is in our DNA, as it is for all systemically oppressed peoples. For us, simply to have survived is innovation, and that’s what we’re reclaiming through business.
“Being innovative is in our DNA, as it is for all systemically oppressed peoples. For us, simply to have survived is innovation, and that’s what we’re reclaiming through business.”
Currently, there are more than 12,000 predominantly small Blak-owned businesses, who collectively contributed about $8.8 billion in the 2020 financial year. And importantly, Blak businesses are over 100 times more likely to hire First Nations people than non-Indigenous businesses. Our businesses forge pathways to economic participation and independence for our people that might not otherwise have existed. But while 12,000 Blak-owned businesses is positive, parity with the mainstream translates to 78,000 Blak-owned businesses. We still have work to do.
Today, when you purchase from a Blak business or social enterprise, you support our autonomy and capacity to govern our own lives. You support a Blak economy. At the same time, you don’t just get a product or service, but an opportunity for deep learning about the world’s oldest continuing cultures.
Before invasion, every First Nation had a traditional economy - a way of gathering and sharing what was needed to thrive. Our Ancestors exchanged bush foods and harvests, materials and tools, and gifts of knowledge, language and culture. A form of conscious trade, First Nations approaches to resource distribution have always been grounded in reciprocity and compelled by our obligations to Country.
There are gaps in the market only we can fill, thanks to our unique lived experience, and the wisdom of our Old People pulsing through our veins. Our businesses transcend transaction. We centre relationships and long-term connection. We often think beyond the current time, about how our actions today will touch the next thousand generations.
It’s no secret that capitalism and caring for Country are incompatible. Perpetual growth on a finite planet inevitably leads to climate chaos and environmental catastrophe. And the thing about capitalism - it can’t be fixed. Its problems are in its bones. The entire system needs to be reimagined and redesigned, not just its features. At the same time - we are here - now. At this moment, our survival depends on our participation.
But even while engaging with capitalism, we’re starting to move from an economy defined by exploitation, towards one founded on care and regeneration. Because the first step to creating new systems is being change-makers within the current ones. As we reclaim our old stories, we begin to disrupt the systems that are stacked against us.
Take Black Duck Foods, for instance. A Blak-owned social enterprise, committed to traditional food growing processes that both care for Country and economically empower First Nations people. Businesses like this are defying colonial thinking and transforming industry.
We are living in a time of transition. Building the Blak economy is certainly not about furthering mindless consumerism. It’s about inspiring consumers to consume with care. In a society where corporate influence often dictates our political agenda, where we spend our money matters.
Intergenerational memories of ancient trade, whether we intend them to or not, inform the way First Nations people engage in business. Our old stories, and the complex knowledges embedded within them, are woven into the fabric of Blak businesses. So this is your invitation to buy Blak - because when you buy Blak you back Blak. 🔥
Want to get behind First Nations-owned businesses?
Head to Trading Blak and Path to Equality for a list of deadly brands you can support:
https://www.tradingblak.com/
https://pathtoequality.com.au/brands/
