In the opening episode of Nakkiah Lui’s latest podcast First Eat, we hear three generations bonding over porridge. Lui and her mother – Gomeroi woman Jenny Beale – are feeding baby Lux, who gently coos in the background. “I have rice porridge all over my beautiful white shirt, and my mum’s got it in her hair,” narrates Lui.
In another episode, we hear the clang of pots and pans as Lui and Beale cook rabbit stew, one of Lui’s favourite dishes growing up.
“It was very different from the way that she made it growing up in a tent, when she was still not considered human by the referendum,” Lui says. “They used to catch the rabbit, grow the vegetables and forage for ingredients.”
“[Now] here I am recording my mum on a podcast about how to create change through stories. I feel like I was only able to do that because of the determination of women like my mother, who were able to create change through sharing a meal and giving sustenance and nourishment to the generation below.”
Unlike her previous podcasts that have focused on everything from race and sex to Aboriginal debutante balls and empowerment, Lui describes First Eat as a “docu-series and memoir, and it’s nothing like I’ve ever done before”.
Over seven episodes, Lui – a Gomeroi and Torres Strait Islander woman – explores what a plate of food would look like if First Nations people owned the land. In one instalment, she’s seeking “what constitutes Indigenous food for me”, and is joined by friend and actor Miranda Tapsell; in another she discusses finger lime, AKA “Australian caviar” with Jayde Harris, a Sydney-based chef who lists Rockpool and Nomad on her CV; while in episode three Lui chats with lawyer, PhD candidate and Wiradjuri woman Taylah Gray about land ownership and returning land to First Nations communities.
Lui has also teamed up again with producer Nicola Harvey, who worked on Lui’s previous podcasts Pretty for an Aboriginal and the Walkley-nominated The Debutantes, for her latest project.
“It’s pretty much a second child,” Lui jokes – she discovered she was pregnant with Lux just before brainstorming the idea for First Eat “[The idea for it] came from thinking about, as a First Nations person, what is the knowledge that I’m passing on to my daughter?
“I could not tell you about any of the native flora or fauna from the land that I was on, and to me that seems like such a big knowledge gap, especially when land is so linked to First Nations sovereignty, equity and empowerment.”
First Eat takes Lui around the country and abroad to New Zealand and the United States to speak with First Nations communities and elders, academics, chefs, cooks and historians. In northern New South Wales, she sips on lemon myrtle tea in the forest of Pilliga national park, which she describes in the podcast as a “supermarket for bush foods and medicines with 75 kinds of fruits … and 240 native bird species”, and she speaks with fellow Gomeroi women. They have long advocated against the Narrabri gas project that threatens to ravage forests, destroy local biodiversity and affect water quality, all of which are significant to Gomeroi cultural heritage.
In an episode about native foods and nutrition, Lui also touches on the effect of colonisation on her own health. She heads to Bundjalung country to explore what it’s like eating on country and talks about how the healthcare system fails First Nations people. “Health things like obesity and diabetes are something I’ve experienced very much in my family and personally,” she says. “The way that I view my relationship to my body is so entwined with the past.”
The podcast also explores the tension between First Nations knowledge of native food and the growing popularity of these ingredients. A 2018 survey found less than 1% of the native bush food industry is represented by Indigenous people and, as Lui remarks in the podcast, these ingredients are commonly found in fine-dining settings. “What I noticed when I go into a restaurant, [is that] they might look at the use of native ingredients. So, for example, finger lime. But the cultural practice of the First Nations people of the land on which the restaurant is – this doesn’t seem to be part of the acknowledgment whatsoever,” she says.
As a writer, comedian, actor, playwright, publisher, director, podcaster and new(ish) mother, storytelling runs through every vein of Lui’s career. “For myself, storytelling has always been a way to create change in a really simple way,” she says.
She believes the change we need to see in the food industry isn’t occurring in the mainstream, but “on the fringes”. “There are lots of people doing things in different ways around the world that are incredibly radical, but very community-based.”
She notes the Yawuru people in Western Australia, who had the Roebuck Plains Station returned to them in 2022, and have since incorporated cultural and food knowledge in pastoral operations. In Nowra in southern NSW, an Aboriginal-led birthing centre will change the way in which people approach midwifery and birthing; and in New Zealand, she meets a couple who create preservative-free Māori and Pasifika baby food.
Baby Lux was central to the creation of the podcast, with Lui working on the series throughout her pregnancy and postpartum, and threading kinship and food through the episodes. “When I had Lux, it seemed impossible not to talk about my own family’s history,” she says. The podcast is a way to preserve her culture for her child, and for generations to come, a resource for First Nations people to feed and nourish one another through the goodness of food and knowledge.
First Eat with Nakkiah Lui is out now through Audible
