Ngaama Dhaagundha Yindang Yanhagi ~ Always Walk Softly on Mother Earth
This is the Wiradjuri phrase at the heart of everything I make. It's not a tagline. It's not marketing language. It is the instruction my Ancestors lived by for 75,000 years on this Country.
Walk softly. Care for the land. Carry the knowledge. Keep moving.
For 75,000 years, my Ancestors walked. For 50 years, NAIDOC Week has been the moment Australia finally started paying attention to that walk.
This is the story of why I made the Walking On Country Chocolate Bar for NAIDOC Week 2026, and how important it is to me.
Where this story begins - with my Grandad
I want to tell you about my Grandad.
He was a Wiradjuri man. A firecracker and quick to temper, but with me he was quiet, gentle and had that way that older Aboriginal people do when they know exactly who they are and where they come from. When I was young, he took me out onto Wiradjuri Country to gather guwandang - quandong - the small tart native fruit that grows in the dry inland Country of New South Wales.
I didn't know then that I was learning something. I thought we were just walking. Just picking fruit, like we did the vegetables. Just being together.
But that is how knowledge moves in Aboriginal culture. Not through lectures. Through walking. Through doing. Through being on Country with someone who knows it, and letting that knowledge enter you through your feet, your hands, your mouth.
My Grandad was not teaching me a lesson about bush tucker. He was teaching me how to walk on Country. How to read it. How to belong to it.
That memory is pressed into every Walking On Country Chocolate bar I make. Those two small footprints embossed into the surface of each bar - that is us. Walking together. Him and me. Elder and child. Knowledge moving between generations the way it always has.
That experience is Deadly Then.
What 50 Years of Deadly actually means
The NAIDOC 2026 theme is 50 Years Deadly.
In Wiradjuri Language, I've expressed this as "Marambangbilang Dhinadhina Dhinadhina Marramarra" ~ Exceedingly Deadly + Twenty + Twenty + Ten = 50
Most people will read "Deadly" and think it means dangerous. In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities, 'deadly' means something entirely different. It means outstanding. Exceptional. Strong. Proud. Alive in the fullest possible sense of the word. In Wiradjuri Language 'deadly' is Marambangbilang!
50 Years of Deadly is not just a celebration. It's a declaration.
It marks 50 years since mob took ownership of NAIDOC Week. Since 1975, when it was decided that this was our week - not a week to be observed, not a week to be spoken about, but a week we own.
The roots go deeper still - back to 26 January 1938, when Aboriginal activists held the Day of Mourning in Sydney, calling against the callous treatment of our people and demanding full citizen status. From that day of protest to this week of celebration - that arc, that walk - that is 50 years of deadly.
It honours every Elder who stood firm when standing firm cost everything. Every organiser who made space when they were told there was no space for them. Every artist who turned resistance into expression. Every community that kept showing up, year after year, generation after generation, refusing to disappear.
We did not disappear. We walked softly. We are still walking. That is the story.
The footprints on the bar
Every Walking On Country bar is embossed with footprints and sand-like patterns across its surface. When I first designed this bar, some people asked me what the patterns meant. I always give the same answer.
These footprints are not decoration. They are evidence.
Evidence that someone walked here. That they kept walking. That the land remembers every step even when the history books do not. The sand-like texture is Country itself - the ochre earth, the dry creek beds, the red dirt of inland Australia where my Wiradjuri Ancestors have walked for 75,000 years.
When you hold this bar, you are holding that walk in your hands.
Three botanicals. Three languages. One bar.
For NAIDOC Week 2026, the Walking On Country bar comes in three flavours. Each one carries a native botanical named in language.
Girri Girri - Lemon Myrtle - in White Chocolate.
Munthari - Muntrie Berry - in Milk Chocolate.
Gulalung - Finger Lime - in Dark Chocolate.
These are not just flavour names. They are Wiradjuri language words. And that matters more than it might seem.
For over 200 years, Aboriginal languages were actively suppressed in this country. Children were punished for speaking their mother tongue. Languages that had been spoken continuously for tens of thousands of years were pushed to the edge of extinction within a few generations. The loss of language is not just a Cultural loss. It is a severing of the connection between people and Country - because language carries knowledge about Country that cannot be translated into English. The names of plants, the knowledge of their uses, the stories of how they came to grow where they grow - all of that lives in language.
When a botanical is named in an Indigenous language word on a chocolate bar sold across Australia, that language travels. It enters kitchens, offices, gift bags, conversations. People read it aloud. They ask what it means. They remember it.
Girri Girri. Munthari. Gulalung. Language that was actively suppressed for over 200 years is now on a chocolate bar, moving across Country.
That is not decoration. That is reclamation.
Deadly Then. Deadly Now. Deadly Always.
My Grandad gathering guwandang on Wiradjuri Country with me. That is Deadly Then.
This bar, made by my hands, from Fair Trade cacao, carrying native botanicals named in language, embossed with the footprints of my Ancestors. That is Deadly Now.
Every person who orders this bar for NAIDOC Week, who holds it, unwraps it, reads the language aloud, tastes the Country - that is Deadly Always.
The walk does not stop. It never stopped. It just keeps moving, from generation to generation, from Country to kitchen, from Elder to child, from chocolate bar to conversation.
Ngaama Dhaagundha Yindang Yanhagi ~ Always Walk Softly on Mother Earth.
How to order
The Walking On Country NAIDOC 2026 bar is available as a single bar or as a gift bag of all three bars.
Mandaang guwu ~ Thank you, for choosing with Yindyamarra (respect, honour).
Fiona Harrison
Chocolate On Purpose