Connecting through food
Paw Eh Thout Kya, also known as Eh Thout, helps newly arrived Australians settle into Bendigo, Central Victoria. She says, “When I know there are like opportunities for them to get involved in, I’m always pushing them to be a part of it.”
One way to settle in, and also prepare for the changing climate, is to get involved with the local food system: growing, sharing, and selling food locally. At Bendigo’s Old Church on the Hill, community growers have stalls where they can come and sell their produce.
Not that simple
The newly arrived Nepalese gardeners Eh Thout is reaching out to don’t seem interested in participating in the growers market. She thinks that language is a barrier, and that the sign-up system is perceived as complicated.
Paw Eh Thout Kya Credit: Carmen Bunting
“When a disaster happens and when we are going to have the effects of climate change - it’s always the communities with significant barriers, newly arrived communities are going to be the worst affected in the scenario”, says Linto Thomas, Director of Regional Victorians of Colour.
Linto uses the example of the , where just hours before the floods, multicultural members of the community were still unaware that sandbags could be collected to protect their homes and businesses.
Linto Thomas, Director of Regional Victorians of Colour Credit: Carmen Bunting Photography/Carmen Bunting Photography
Eh Thout is 21 and a Karen youth leader. The Karen are the First Nations people of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Eh Thout studies health science at university and works part time.
Eh Thout helped put on multicultural events as part of her job at Regional Victorians of Colour.
She’s also involved in netball games, youth concerts and other social events that get her community out and about - “To make them feel like they are accepted, and they are here and have purpose and strength, and can contribute to the community.”
Regional Victorians of Colour
Regional Victorians of Colour pushes back on issues like refugees being isolated or pigeonholed by their cultural background, or being pressured to assimilate.
It aims for cross-cultural connection between people from different cultural and religious backgrounds. One way it does this is by hosting social events for the wider community.
It also works with grassroots organisations like neighbourhood houses and community gardens that run services and programs for everyone.
‘Feeling safe and confident to walk into that space’
Linto Thomas says that their work involves “working and supporting our community members to feel safe and confident” to talk into community spaces, and make sure that the volunteers and people who are running these places feel that they can confidently welcome and interact with new community members.
In many ways dealing with racism and intolerance now is really a form of climate adaptation.Linto Thomas
He says, “It’s not about getting a one off training. It’s about having ongoing events and activities where there’s an exchange of ideas and of people meeting each other and sharing their thoughts, accent traditions in an informal way to create that community connection.”
Karen community in Bendigo
Seventeen years ago, Lah Su Pah Thei and his family first arrived in Bendigo. He says, “We didn’t know Bendigo existed and we didn’t choose to come to Bendigo. It was very difficult to make a connection with other community members.”
Now, the Karen language is spoken in 1600 households, making it Bendigo's most common language spoken at home after English.
Long Gully Community Garden
Lah Su is a member of the Long Gully Community garden and doing lots of things recommended to get climate ready - from getting better connected, to becoming more food secure to sharing local knowledge about dealing with impacts happening here.
One third of the community garden beds are leased to Karen families.
Jonathan Ridnell manages the Long Gully Community Garden. He believes that the strength of a good community garden is ‘that idea of people getting to know each other.’
He says that “Going to the Karen dinner and actually eating food from the garden that’s been prepared by our Karen families, was not just tasty, but an education. Karen horticulture is about using as much of a plant as you possibly can, so leaves and stems come off for salads and stews, and the roots come off for stews and other cooking - so the whole of plant philosophy is something I’m observing and absorbing and thinking how can I do more of that.”
Garden Facilitator Jonathan Ridnell in the Long Gully Community Garden Credit: Kyla Brettle
Linto Thomas says that climate education for newly arrived communities often assumes they have no knowledge or expertise in this space.
“They talk about raising awareness… and don’t want to make an effort to explore traditional ways of doing things.”
Instead, Regional Victorians of Colour takes a strengths-based approach.
“We can go to the community, start listening to them, create a space where people can actually start sharing their knowledge - their ideas around climate change in this instant - around adaptation, and then we can find answers and build on those answers from there. And I think it is important to start listening to these grassroots voices.”
LISTEN TO
How Bendigo’s Karen community is adapting to climate change
SBS Audio
12/05/202424:58
Guests in this episode of Everything We Need
Lah Su Pah Thei, Paw Eh Thout Kya, Linto Thomas, Jonathan Ridnell
Credits
Kyla Brettle: Research, recording, editing and sound
Jane Curtis: Story editor and consulting producer
Rob Law: Original Music
Photography: Carmen Bunting
Produced with support from the SBS Audio team, Caroline Gates and Joel Supple
This series is based on an earlier series called Climate Ready Stories commissioned by Dona Cayetana and Geoff Caine as part of the Victorian State Government's .
Mentioned in this episode
- Karen Culture and Social Support Foundation
Transcript
This podcast was recorded and produced on Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung Lands and we pay our respects to elders past and present - thanking them for their Care of Country- and extending respect to all First Nations People listening.
Paw Eh Thout Kya: So my full name is Paw Eh Thout Kya - but like in Australia and when I go to school, people usually know me as Eh Thout.
Eh Thout volunteers to help newly arrived Australians settle into life here.
Paw Eh Thout Kya: When I know there are like opportunities for them to get involved in I’m always pushing them to be a part of it…
One way to settle in - and prepare for the changing climate - is to get involved with the local food system - growing, sharing, selling food in our neighbourhoods - helps make stronger connections with where we live and develop a buffer against food insecurity .
Paw Eh Thout Kya: We’re here at the old church on the hill … and on Saturday we have a growers market…just on that little alley - we set up community growers stalls where they can come and sell their produce and make a little bit of money.
But the newly arrived gardeners Eh Thout is reaching out to - don’t seem all that interested in participating in the growers market at the local community hub.
Paw Eh Thout Kya: I think the language barrier, and they probably think there is a whole system where they have to enrol and that - and they feel like it might be a bit complicated, and that’s why they’re a bit reluctant to join and like be part of it.
So is the reluctance just the language barrier and red tape? Or is there more to it than that?
I’m Kyla Brettle with ‘Everything we need.’ a climate podcast about.... making change in our lives for the better.
With stories about people who see the big picture - that climate isn’t an isolated issue, but affects all aspects of our lives - and is an opportunity rethink what we need to thrive, now and into the future.
News (Anthony Albanese): We are living in very dangerous times in the days and weeks ahead …
Cam Walker: We got a call at quarter past eleven and already the water was in the sub-station, it was phenomenal how quickly the creek came up, it was absolutely raging.
News: The community in the meantime has made fantastic efforts on both sides of the river to get sandbags out around the vulnerable houses - but this is something that is going to be round a few weeks…
Linto Thomas: I was talking to some of the multicultural community members who had been volunteering during the flood. And this volunteer noticed that 99 percent of the people who came to pick up the sandbags were people from the established anglo-saxon communities.
Just few hours before the flood, the multicultural members had no clue - according to his words they were chilling out at their place thinking this is not going to affect us or never knew about it, so they never came and picked up the sandbags.
So, that itself was saying how, when something happens, when a disaster happens and when we are going to have the affects of climate change - it’s always the communities with significant barriers, newly arrived communities are going to be the worst affected in the scenario.
Linto Thomas, Director of Regional Victorians of Colour, talking about the 2022 floods in Shepparton …
For those fleeing persecution and war - Australia is seen as a safe haven - And it is a lucky country - in many respects.
But it’s also facing pretty intense climate impacts - despite the wet weather it’s the driest continent inhabited by humans - and it’s looking to get dryer - extinction rates are through the roof and Australia is among the most fire-prone countries in the world.
So it’s important that everyone living here does what they can to prepare for the many changes that come with climate change - this is especially so for those at the pointy end of climate injustice - the groups and communities that will experience the effects of climate change sooner and more keenly than others…
Paw Eh Thout Kya: Hello?Is there free parking? Yeah, there’s free parking mate, you just park anywhere you can find a free park.
Linto: There are more buntings to come - do we have more or this is it? Anu, do we have more buntings or this is it?
Anu: I don’t know about buntings
Paw Eh Thout Kya: Do I have to wear my Karen shirt? If you want to - but you don’t have to.
Anu: People are busy - BBQing, and all volunteers are setting up things - making sure everybody have food by 6:30.
Paw Eh Thout Kya: Today we’re at the Long Gully splash park - seeing all the multicultural communities come together and sharing our food and dances.
We’re at a free community dinner - called a ‘moving feast’ - happening in the regional city of Bendigo - home of about 100,000 with nearly 8 percent of people speaking a language other than English at home.
Rose: We call it Harmony Week here in Australia, and we’re bring our different cultural backgrounds together and acknowledging the contribution that migrant and refugee communities make to making a stronger happier healthier Australia -
Paw Eh Thout Kya: Hello everyone, my name is Eh Thout and I am part the Karen community
The Karen are the first nations people of Myanmar - which is also known Burma.
Paw Eh Thout Kya: We came to Australia as Refugees and having to live and grow between our family traditional culture and the mainstream Australian culture….
I use to be really shy, like with public speaking I’d be nervous - but then I was like go for it, Eh Thout, if you make a mistake, you make a mistake.
I’d just like to let you know the theme of this years Harmony is our past and our future
Eh Thout is 21, she’s a Karen youth leader and studying health science university - as well as working part time
Paw Eh Thout Kya: I just hope to inspire someone, like a little girl. Like a girl who speaks the same language as me, she’ up there facilitating a conversation on whatever - that they can do whatever they want - yeah, like thriving - they can thrive, they are not in survival mode anymore because they’ve got concrete foundation, like that they can work off from - and like make use of the opportunities we have here in Australia…
I’m just typing up the feedback that we got from the harmony week moving feast … from A lot of people enjoy community coming together.
Eh Thout helped put on the moving feast at the splash-park as part of her job with Linto and Regional Victorians of Colour
She is also involved in netball games, youth concerts and other social events that get her community out and about
Paw Eh Thout Kya: To make them feel like they are accepted and they are here and have purpose and strength and can contribute to the community.
Linto: Our focus is mainly looking at two aspects of settlement - one is that the community connection within the community - the second thing is that connection with the broader community,
As we’ve been exploring in the series, community connection is essential to being resilient to the impacts of climate change - making you better able to roll with uncertainty and adapt to the new normal.
Developing ties within your community and to the broader community is what the governments’ regional climate ready plan is telling everyone to work on - regardless of how long you’ve been here.
It’s so - you know where to get support when it’s come down to protecting your home with sandbags - and as global supply chains get disrupted - you have other ways to find fresh food.
And often there are significant barriers in that space and we tend to see that settlement services are always exclusive - with services and activities which are created only for refugee communities, and newly arrived communities. So there is very little scope or opportunities for broader communities as well as the multicultural communities to interact with each other…
Less than 20 years ago there were virtually no Karen Australians living in Bendigo…
We didn’t know Bendigo existed and we didn’t choose to come to Bendigo.
Our family was the first Karen family in Bendigo, so and it was very difficult to make a connection with other community member.
Lah Su Pah Thei and his family emigrated to Australia in 2007, his daughter, Bu Gay is interpreting….
When I use to live in Burma, it is a very peaceful village, the forest is beautiful and everything we need is provided by the forest.
The hardest part is Burmese military came in and destroy the village, that’s why we have to move to the refugee camp.
When we live in the camp and we were hopeful to come to a new country, but we didn’t know where we are going to be located. But we don’t really care where we going to be located, as long as we get out of the refugee camp.
How do you keep your spirit up through those experiences?
He said, that you have to stay strong, that you have to calm your mind, that with a situation like this it can give you stress, if you think too much you can also develop mental health issues.
So how important is it to know someone already in the country, in order to get into Australia?
Coming to a third country is very difficult - it is very important to know someone, and we were very lucky that we know family friend that live in Australia
When we moved to Australia, my children are very small and both of us cannot speak English we were live in our sponsors house and we depend on them like kids 24/7 - for example grocery shopping, school drop off, using stuff in the house, technology, everything, it’s like you just learn to walk again.
Kyla: I can see how important it is to have strong networks in the community to survive, really.
Paw Eh Thout Kya: I think we are really resilient because we have gone through so much in just one generation, relying on each other, not just being individual I think it’s really really big in the Karen community and how we keep being resilient.
Linto: Resilience should not be mistaken as happiness - or ability to cope with anything and everything - people had to do it because thy have no other choice, and they have done it.
Eh Thout experience of arrival in Australia is different to Lah Su’s - a generation younger, she was born in a refugee camp and has never been to Myanmar, or Burma. For Eh Thout - being able understanding english easily revealed other challenges to living here
Paw Eh Thout Kya: When we were newly arrived in Australia, we had to go to the hospital, I was only 8, and my mum had my baby sister, so we had to do like a check up, and I remember taking the bus, and the lady like looked at us and looked at a man, and she said, I wish these people would go back to their country, I was the only one who understood that, my mum didn’t my sister didn’t ‘cause she was only a baby and mum didn’t speak english - so as a young kid I already felt like this isn’t where I belong, and then like I must try and be like them so they’ll accept me.
So like when we had Karen school and our parents would tell us to go - I didn’t go, that why I don’t really know how to read or write Karen
Kyla Brettle: So you must have gone through some kind of transition…
I did, so in year 8 one of my teacher looked at me as was like - I would be embarrassed if I was you - you are Karen but you don’t know how to read or write Karen - and I was like, he’s right, I’m Karen - why am I trying to like speak another language more fluently and why aren’t I learning my mother tongue? I was like, okay, I have to do something about it - that’s why I’m really passionate about integrating the two cultures together.
For Regional Victorians of Colour - pushing back on issues like refugees being isolated or pigeonholed by their cultural background - or even pressured to assimilate - looks like hosting social events.
Maybe whether it is a community garden event or a larger moving feast gathering where the whole neighbourhood or the community coming together or smaller monthly community dinners where a few people come together -
It’s also working with grassroots organisations like neighbourhood houses and community gardens that run services and programs for everyone
And for us that work involves working and supporting our community members to feel safe and confident to walk into that space place - the volunteers and people who are running these places can feel they can confidently welcome new community members, interact with them confidently.
Those kind of works - it’s not about getting a one off training it’s about having ongoing events and activities where this exchange of ideas and of people meeting each other and sharing their thoughts, accent traditions in an informal way and create that community connection
Lemongrass.
It’s not weed.
Yeah, this is my garden - so we planted lemongrass and broccoli
It’s a good time for coriander though.
Seventeen years after Lah Su and his family first arrived in Bendigo - Karen spoken in 1600 households, making it the most common language spoken at home after English.
Lah Su is a member of the Long Gully Community garden and doing lots of things recommended to get climate ready - from getting better connected, to becoming more food secure to sharing local knowledge about dealing with impacts happening here.
Kyla: What are some of the differences between the way that you’ve learnt to garden and the way that gardeners you’ve met have gardened.
It’s very different because back in the home, we are gardening to survive, for to grow our own food - but here, we are gardening to enjoy the community.
Jonathan Ridnell - And I think the strength of a good community garden is that idea of people getting to know each other and saying I’ve got too much squash, would you like some or that looks really interesting, and a gardening going here - he’s a bunch of my water spinach - go home and steam it and see what you think.
Jonathan Ridnell manages the long gully community garden
And Lah Su through word of mouth, we have now extended out through his informal friend network - and so now, out of the 28 raised garden beds we lease tot he community, um, a third of them are Karen families
Jonathan has been to Moving Feast events at the Long Gully Community Garden put on by Regional Victorians of Colour.
Going to the Karen dinner and actually eating food from the garden that’s been prepared by our Karen families, was not just tasty, but an education.
Karen horticulture is about using as much of a plant as you possibly can, so leaves and stems come off for salads and stews, and the roots come off for stews and other cooking - so the whole of plant philosophy is something I’m observing and absorbing and thinking how can I do more of that.
As part of preparing and planning for the Long Gully moving feast - Eh Thout lead a structure conversation with the Karen Gardeners. It how climate change is impacting Bendigo - but really focused on what the Karen community already knew and the skills they have in dealing with those types of challenges and opportunities
Paw Eh Thout Kya: We value gardening…I think that was one thing that came out of the conversation - that they know things - they can teach people they don’t always have to be taught
Linto says that climate education for newly arrived communities often assumes they have no knowledge or expertise in this space
They talk about raising awareness… don’t want to make an effort to explore traditional ways of doing things
We really wanted to focus on the strengths of these communities - we needed to start working not with what is wrong with the communities -
We can go to the community, start listening to them, create a space where people can actually start sharing their knowledge - their ideas - around climate change in this instant - around adaptation - and then we can find answers and build on those answers from there- and I think it is important to start listening to these grass roots voices.
I did want to ask - has there been any negative side effects or intolerance and stuff from raising the profile of the Karen community in Bendigo?
Paw Eh Thout Kya: Yes there was an incident just last year.
A local family with a Karen background was celebrating
Paw Eh Thout Kya: My family is Buddhist, so we had a prayer
And some of the neighbours I don’t think liked it
Paw Eh Thout Kya: I received a letter
About 10-15 families got these anonymous letters
Whether it was from an individual or a group of individuals I’m not sure
Paw Eh Thout Kya: Saying like how there is weird chanting coming from your house and its really loud and disrespectful - there are like elderlies around in your neighbourhood - don’t you understand
You don’t sing in your back yard - what you did is not the Australian way
They have to behave better or otherwise
Take your culture and take it back home
Paw Eh Thout Kya: So it was like - very… very hurtful - because we are refugees - even though we have been here over 10 years, a lot of our kids are born here and have been raised here - are we still like refugees?
You can’t say that the west are more racist, or that the other is more racist and more discriminate - if I have to be honest, it’s in every race.
We are all a guests to Australia - the owner of this land are the Indigenous peoples. The English people and the Karen people are the other guests to this country
Issues of racism always occur where there are high levels of social inequality - which comes from that idea that resources within the communities that are supposed to be used for the welfare of established citizens, are being used to support newly arrived refugees or other ethnic communities or religious minorities - and climate change is going to increase that anger much more - they are going to feel more and more vulnerable, more and more make the life unaffordable and that anger is going to be expressed as racism.
So in many ways dealing with racism and intolerance now is really a form of climate adaptation.
Yeah, the more and more we look at climate change and adaptation it’s becoming explicit that it’s not going to just happen around food or rain patterns - it’s already having a direct impact on our day to day life - and that is the space where racism is happening
In response to the racist letter last year - Regional Victorians of Colour partnered with other community groups to show solidarity with the Karen community…
We needed to do something in the suburbs, in those community centres - a positive counteraction towards this events where we wanted to invite the broader community and the multicultural communities to come together, celebrate - and the voice that needs to be heard is the multicultural voices of young people who had been affected by it.
And that event was the model for this year's Harmony Day feast at the Long Gully splash park.
Thanks everybody - as I said before, today is joined to the end of harmony week and it actually aligns with international day for the elimination of racial discrimination.
To me it’s they are more people, that’s all
It helps us like understand each other better because you get a lot of misunderstandings
I want them to feel like we all have commitment and love to the society and to the people - and I hope they feel that
Paw Eh Thout Kya: So, for you guys who aren’t from outside of Australia - if you see someone different or who doesn’t speak the same language as you -what you can do is give them a smile, a smile is a universal language - so just give them a smile, thank you….
I love how Regional Victorian's of Colour keep their eyes on the big picture - of human relationships - the stuff that underpins everything we do - and working to promote healthy interaction that respects and honours difference while supporting lots of connections and links.
Humanity is going to need as much empathy as we can muster as climate change continues to intensify.
An Australian think tank - the institute for economics and peace - projects that 1.2 billion people could be displaced by climate-related events over the next couple of decades.*
Climate change tests our humanity - but comes with the opportunity to do things better.
My heartfelt thanks to those whose voices you heard in this episode-
Paw Eh Thout Kya, Linto Thomas, Lah Su Pah Thei, Bu Gay Pah Thei, Jonathan Ridnell
In the next and final story in this series - we explore a first nations approach to adapting to our changing climate with the launch of the Djaara climate change strategy - Turning Wrong Way Climate Right Way.
So make sure you are following Everything We Need on SBS Audio - or whereever you get your podcasts.
* Reference - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/climate-refugees-the-world-s-forgotten-victims/
Everything we need is written, recorded, edited and produced by me, Kyla Brettle
with Jane Curtis as story editor, consulting producer and on show notes
All the music you heard was by Rob Law and gorgeous production photography by Carmen Bunting.
This podcast is based on an earlier documentary commissioned by the Victorian state government's ADAPT Lodden Mallee - with executive from Dona Cayetana
Thanks for listening, I’m Kyla Brettle see you next time.
