PARTICIPANT PROFILE : CHERYL MOGG
Cherly Mogg was a participant of the Women’s Indigenous Food and Fibre Entrepreneurs Program, Toowoomba Workshop.
WORDS & IMAGES BY ALICE ARMITAGE
Cheryl Mogg carries herself with the kind of composure that only comes from decades of showing up for community long before anyone asked her to. She speaks softly but with the authority of a woman who has walked through many systems – education, justice, arts, governance, native title.
Born and raised in Goondiwindi, she talks about land and identity with a certainty that comes from living deeply inside her Kamilaroi worldview.
Her business, Tarmunggie, was not built from a business plan. It was built from a lifelong reckoning with cultural responsibility – women’s business, matriarchal leadership, the stewardship of story. She describes the work she does as continuation rather than creation. “We don’t just create,” she said. “We carry legacy with us, and we lead, and we tell stories.” You hear the weight of that sentence long after she says it.
The Women’s Indigenous Food and Fibre Entrepreneurs Program offered her something unusual: a moment of reflection. A space where she wasn’t the one holding everyone else up.
Cheryl shared this about her participation in the Women’s Indigenous Food and Fibre Entrepreneurs Program. “It’s like understanding what you’re doing is okay, and not being so tough on yourself,” she said. “When you come together with people, it just reassures you that you’re actually on the right path.”
Cheryl is building Tarmunggie as a cultural studio, but what she is really building is space.
Space for women. Space for story. Space for cultural arts practices that were once silenced, dismissed or flattened.
When she describes her studio, you can almost see it form around her: woven mats, fibres soaking, women seated shoulder to shoulder, the kind of ease that comes only when people feel safe. She sees the future in the hands of women who are ready to step forward but don’t know how. She wants to give them the ground to stand on.
She is honest about the challenges, but she refuses to allow them to define her. What defines her is the clarity with which she sees culture as a living organism: something you feed, protect and pass on with care.
You can find more information about Cheryl and her work here.