Burgeoning Tasmanian Aboriginal food business makes renewed plea for sovereign abalone rights

The driving force behind a successful Tasmanian Aboriginal catering business woman has been fighting a campaign for the right to commercially harvest abalone using traditional practices. 

Kitana Mansell, at the palawa kipli kitchens in Risdon Cove, wants the State Government to recognise her business’s cultural rights to harvest abalone. Picture: Chris Kidd

Kitana Mansell is a young Tasmanian Aboriginal woman with the world at her feet.

The 24-year-old has developed the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre’s palawa kipli catering company into a runaway commercial and cultural success story, and has firm ambitions to bring Indigenous cuisine back to the forefront of the island state’s culinary scene through the establishment of a stand-alone restaurant in central Hobart.

But at the same time Ms Mansell has been growing the business to the point where it is now booked out up to six months in advance, the palawa woman has been fighting a behind-the-scenes campaign with the state government for the right to commercially harvest abalone using traditional practices.

While palawa kipli’s pleas for sovereign fishing rights have so far fallen on deaf ears within the government, Ms Mansell is hoping that a review of the quota units signed over to the Land and Sea Aboriginal Corporation Tasmania nearly three years ago offered the next best chance of obtaining justice.

“I would have thought as the only Tasmanian Aboriginal food business, that is in fact, 100% Aboriginal owned and operated, that we would be the first people to have been contacted,” Ms Mansell said of the State Government’s decision.

“But there was no community consultation or conversation around that at all.

“We ended up having a meeting with the fisheries minister last year, but we feel we’re not going to get any practical solutions unless we bring it to the wider community’s attention.

“We are rightfully entitled as Aboriginal people to have control and ownership over our traditional foods, and there shouldn’t be any colonial laws, regulations, or barriers for our people to be in an industry that our people created.”

Kitana Mansell, pictured in 2022, harvesting cultural bush tucker ingredients for the opening of the National Indigenous Legal and Health Justice Conference. Picture: Linda Higginson

In March 2022, the state government signed an historic agreement with LSACT at a ceremony at Murrayfield on Bruny Island, to fish the 40 state-owned abalone units.

Tasmanian Minister for Business, Industry and Resources, Eric Abetz, told the Mercury that details of the three-year commercial agreement remained confidential. 

“The specific commercial terms of arrangements are not ordinarily disclosed to third parties,” Mr Abetz said. 

“Any future allocation of these government-owned abalone units would be considered at the time they become available.” 

The government said a decision on the future of Indigenous abalone quotas would be made at the end of 2024. 

But Ms Mansell said without sovereign abalone rights of its own, palawa kipli could not realise its ambitions of serving customers with a product guaranteed to have been harvested, processed, and cooked using traditional methods.

And Ms Mansell said that her business’s current inability to provide such assurances was hampering its growth, and a future which she envisaged including a tourist-drawing edible plants garden at Risdon Cove, and a palawa restaurant in Hobart.

palawa kipli manager Kitana Mansell has asked the Tasmanian Government for sovereign abalone quotas for her business. Picture: Chris Kidd

“The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre already has Aboriginal sea rangers who work in our seas and bush rangers on our land, and who have all the cultural and commercial resources we need to harvest abalone or any native foods as a sovereign people,” she said.

“So it’s important to have control over these abalone quotas so that the Aboriginal community can continue their cultural harvesting practices and be self-sufficient.

“As a palawa woman trying her very best to promote her traditional foods for the wider community to learn from, I would like the Government to come and sit down at the table and have a solution to this issue.”

Ms Mansell said if a solution to palawa kipli’s abalone impasse could be found, the payoff would be a more authentic product, an enhanced Aboriginal experience for locals and tourists alike, and greater job opportunities for the state’s Aboriginal population.

“Our food tells a story of our deep history, dating back over 65,000 years, of sustainability, cultural practices and our survival, here in lutruwita/Tasmania,” she said.

“We need to make sure that this an authentic and sustainable industry, we need to do the right thing by the Aboriginal community and make sure that all Aboriginal people have food sovereignty in this state.”

Originally published as Burgeoning Tasmanian Aboriginal food business makes renewed plea for sovereign abalone rights