As it’s always been.
Uncle Charlie’s is a 100% Aboriginal owned business. For us, this means that Aboriginal peoples, our knowledges and practices are at the center of everything we do. Uncle Charlie’s is all about sharing stories, sharing food, yarning, caring for country and sustainability.
Uncle Charlie’s brings you the Tastes of Country – as it has always been – now with a unique modern twist. For more than 80,000 years Aboriginal people have been trading foods and flavours and now we bring these practices to you. And what better way to taste country, learn and enjoy our home than with a snack food you already know and love – popcorn.
In one handful of Uncle Charlie’s popcorn you’ve got the oldest living cultures of collecting bush tucker, storytelling, sustainability and obligation to care for country. Each mouthful is a unique experience of tasting Australian native foods and botanicals all carefully sourced from trade relationships that have been practiced here for 80,000 years and continue today.
We’re inviting you to be a part of the story with us.
We are an Indigenous Gourmet snack food because we’re a 100% Aboriginal owned, all our ingredients are top quality and all our food sharing methods are from Aboriginal people and our knowledges.
Uncle Charlie’s ingredients are premium because we only use naturally grown, environmentally sustainable crops, ethically harvested and sourced with Aboriginal community knowledges and relationships.
You can be sure that what you’re tasting and experiencing are the authentic flavours of country as we have always known it.
We pop our corn in pure Macadamia oil as that’s the best way to protect the true taste of our flavour combinations.
Uncle Charlie’s proudly and intentionally brings at least three Australian Native Foods and Botanical flavours to every product we offer.
As you enjoy you can also connect and learn a little more of the stories and practices of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Nation that brings each flavour to you.
Uncle Charlie’s also offers the stories of our Country – Wiradjuri Country – to you through the corn and the popping process. Uncle Charlie’s corn is sustainably sourced from Wiradjuri Country; watered from Wiradjuri Country; harvested, prepared and popped on Wiradjuri Country.
You, by dharra (eating, swallow) our products contributes, returns and distributes 5% of the cost to the nations where each of the raw ingredients come from. Uncle Charlie’s identifies the place and engages with the sovereignty of the Aboriginal Nation where our raw ingredients are planted, nurtured and harvested.
This map attempts to represent the language, social or nation groups of Aboriginal Australia. It shows only the general locations of larger groupings of people which may include clans, dialects or individual languages in a group. It used published resources from the eighteenth century-1994 and is not intended to be exact, nor the boundaries fixed. It is not suitable for native title or other land claims.
David R Horton (creator), © AIATSIS, 1996.
No reproduction without permission. To purchase a print version visit: https://shop.aiatsis.gov.au/
You, by dharra (eating, swallow) our products contributes, returns and distributes 5% of the cost to the nations where each of the raw ingredients come from. Uncle Charlie’s identifies the place and engages with the sovereignty of the Aboriginal Nation where our raw ingredients are planted, nurtured and harvested.
We are working with our suppliers to utilise technology (bar code and geo location) to show you each nation that contributes their country and stories in each batch. It is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Nation’s sovereignty that you are engaging with when you dharra.
To Uncle Charlie’s it is vital that we reinvest our profits so that we can offer more specialised, diverse and sustained employment opportunities for our families and peoples.
By participating in our business, you help maintain the environment where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and sovereignties are designed into all of our supply chains.
One of the many ways Uncle Charlie’s shares stories of country is through our packaging.
Featuring Wiradjuri visual language designed by Wiradjuri artist Peta-Joy Williams and Prue Marks from Ography, our boxes present the flavours of each variety and the country that brings them to you.
Take a second look and you might recognise the flavour images located on country, on a birds eye view of Australia. This traces all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Nations you are connecting to.
The base of the box is a coolamon. Coolamon is a Wiradjuri word meaning dish of bark or wood. Open it out and you’ll see that in this design our coolamon is a Wiradjuri carrying vessel, for you to hold and share your popcorn – from Wiradjuri to you, to your family and friends.
The base of the boxes are made from Koala board 100% Australian Made paper. All of the packaging is food safe, recyclable, biodegradable and as super enviro friendly as we can make it.
Charlie Evans was our uncle and Uncle Charlie was and is a Wiradjuri elder, he was a well-known and loved local town character, a well respected drover and a passionate movie buff.
Uncle Charlie Evans, also known as “Uddah” was a proud Wiradjuri man born at Peak Hill at the turn of the 20th Century. Very early in his life he moved to the township of Trangie with his mother and many siblings. One of his siblings is our Nan – Daphne Barnes (Aunty Daph).
Nearly all of his working life Uncle Charlie was a sheep and cattle drover. His knowledge and practice of country and navigation was legendary in and across Wiradjuri Country. His navigation skills were unrivaled. Uncle Charlie’s time with Country meant that he learnt a lot about the foods, flavours and dharra (eating) of the surrounding peoples and their Country. And this continual, practical, varied relationship to country was also the way of his grandmother and mother before him.
If there’s one story that brings a smile to many of the locals faces it is to talk about times when Uncle Charlie would attend Trangie’s open air picture theatre in the 1950’s. As an illiterate English communicator he could not read, nor write in English. In Wiradjuri he was fluent.
At the movie shows Uncle Charlie would move about the theatre telling (sometimes yelling) the Indians where the Cowboys were and vice verca. He often hid behind chairs pretending to be in the movie as a cowboy or an Indian.
Uncle Charlie made the movies a bigger, more exciting event – the locals would attend the movies to enjoy the whole immersive experience with him.
This is one of the many reasons why Uncle Charlie was and still is a Trangie community icon. Today you can see his image used as part of our towns promotions – he seems to capture the spirt of the place.
Miimi and Gambang Trading Company (sister & brother in our Wiradjuri language) is what allows us as a Wiradjuri family business to bring the practices of our Elders to you. Uncle Charlie’s is one way of practicing our traditions of Country and sharing and trading with other Peoples and their Countries.
Our starting practice is that all of Australia, including the Torres Strait Islands has always been “Country” and we have always been practicing, tasting and snacking on and with Country.
