The traditional knowledge of the aborigines of Australia, the oldest living culture on the planet, shines commercially in a citrus-flavored gin to bring green ants and has already won international awards in the world of spirits.
Green ants (Rhytidoponera metallica), rich in protein and with medicinal properties, are collected by the family of former rugby player Daniel Motlop on land in the village of Larrakia, in the Australian Northern Territory, to make the Green Ant gin, which shines inside their bottles to these insects.
“We were the first company to start marketing green ants,” Daniel Motlop, founder of the Green Ant Gin brand, which sells in stores, told the Australian Foreign Press Association in Adelaide (South) of liquors from Australia.
The green ants, which sell for about A $ 650 (US $ 494 or € 420) a kilo, give the lime and coriander flavor to the Green Ant gin, which was awarded the gold medal in the 2018 Sant Francesc Spirits Competition.
The fame of these endemic Australian insects has also reached the haute cuisine of the hand of the Danish chef Rene Redzepi of the restaurant Noma, considered one of the best in the world and who used them to decorate ice cream sandwiches of mango and give it that spicy citrus flavor.
RESPECT FOR NATURE
The demand for green ants has not led the family of Daniel Motlop, a former Australian rugby player and owner of Something Wild, which sells Aboriginal gastronomic products, to put commercial interests ahead of the need to protect traditional practices and natural environment.
That’s why anthills collected from the forests of northern Australia are placed in refrigerators to put them to sleep and then force the workers out with a heat stroke.
“But we don’t catch the larvae or the queen either,” Motlop commented on his popular post at Adelaide City Central Market, insisting that his company not only generates work in its community but also respects nature, which has been providing food and medicine for 60,000 years to the natives of this country.
TRADITION IS NOT LOST
Sustainability is a key element for the Larrakia, one of the First Nations peoples who are traditional owners of an area of northern Australia, encompassing the city of Darwin.
The Larrakia are governed by seven stations that mark their food collection activities, many of which are carried out exclusively by men or women, which is also governed by a complex system that gives their world balance and harmony.
This dual system called “yirritja-dhuwa” is similar to the concept of the Asian “Yin Yang” and encompasses “basically everything from stars, the sun, people, language groups, animals, fruits. yirritja-dhuwa and tells us what we can collect, ”Motlop explained.
“For example, crocodiles are ‘yirritja’ animals. I am a ‘yittirja’ man and this prevents us from eating them to protect them,” the Aboriginal businessman added when explaining this complex system of kinship and sustainability. which translates into this area into eight “yirritja” and eight “Chuwa” clans.
THE PROHIBITION OF ALCOHOL
But the harmony of the First Nations of Australia, which was fractured with colonization, has been lost in the modern life of several Indigenous communities where the Australian Government has banned the sale and intake of alcoholic beverages and where gin Green Ant is inaccessible.
Authorities justify this “dry law” in some Aboriginal territories to prevent domestic violence and alcoholism, although some activists call the measure paternalistic and to feed negative stereotypes.
“It’s a thorny issue (alcoholism among Aboriginal people) but we try to overcome it in Australia, it’s a stereotype,” said the former rugby player, who after leaving professional sport devoted himself to this business with the which helps financially his family and his community.