The destruction of food resources at the colonial frontier

In contemporary Western society food security is taken for granted, yet endemic growth-faltering from insufficient food in the child's weaning period in remote Aboriginal communities, and the recurrent crises in food distribution to remote Aboriginal communities, are a measure of the inherent fragility of this public given in such communities (Hunter et al. 2014; Pollard 2014). This fragility is an echo of the profound disruption to food security in Aboriginal society at the colonial frontier that destroyed one of the three fundamental prerequisites for human parenting. These comprise the population profile that is optimal for cooperative parenting; the availability of transitional weaning food and continuity of the knowledge needed to select and prepare it; and freedom from the threat of interpersonal violence to women, especially mothers. The focus of this chapter is the impact of colonisation as one of the primary causes of the loss of food security for the Aboriginal population at the time of settlement