Since I am an immigrant from the Torres Strait living and working on Aboriginal ... little things as well as the big ones are of equal importance to me during my 14 year ... Deirdre Heitmeyer, Denise Emmerson, Cheryl Newton, Mandy Kelly, Adelle ...... myself within the ged (country) of our island homes, the islands of Mer and ...
Decolonising the Migration and Urbanisation of Torres Strait Islanders (Ailan pipel) from the Torres Straits to Mainland Australia between the 1960s and 1970s
John Doolah
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Philosophy Umulliko Higher Degree Research Centre The University of Newcastle Callaghan, NSW 2308 Australia
DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY This work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to this copy of my thesis, when deposited in the University Library, being made available for loan and photocopying subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I hereby certify that the work embodied in this Thesis is the result of original research, the greater part of which was completed subsequent to admission to candidature for the degree. Signature: …………………… Date: ……..
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DEDICATION I dedicate this thesis to my Nene (Grandmother) Charlotte Buri Doolah (née Reuben) who provided me with the values of life in my childhood and who demonstrated her unconditional love, which became the basis for my adult learning experiences. In writing this thesis, I came to understand and accept that Nene Charlotte was the first person who believed in me and was blind to all the negative things of my character. She sheltered me and provided a nurturing and protective environment for my early childhood growth and development within the Ailan society. Later in life, my early experiences with Nene Charlotte, of growing and developing in a nurturing and protective environment, allowed me to understand self-determination through my tertiary education experience. Nene Charlotte gave me the opportunity to believe in myself. Like most of my people and our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, we are given opportunities but never allowed the support and protective environment to allow us to be ourselves, because in the broader society we are always measured or expected to measure up to the Kole, Migloo or Gubba (white man) standard(s). I have come to understand and experience the meaning of Indigenous self-determination in relation to my tertiary education journey and struggle as a social reality otherwise like most of our people without the support and opportunity self-determination might have just been a word printed on paper. I dedicate this thesis to all my parents, beginning with my Dad Gara Doolah, and Mum Harriet Doolah (née Bourne), my Big Daddy Harry and Big Ama Akazee Whaleboat (née Tapim), my Big Daddy Eila and Big Ama Perina Doolah (née Cowley), and also to my extended pamle (family), all my dads and mums, uncles and aunties, grandfathers and grandmothers, my Doolah, Whaleboat, Reuben, Cedar, Pensio, David, Cloudy, Sailor, Seden, Cowley, Bourne, Geas, Wasaga pamle and to my whole Ailan and Kaurareg Aboriginal pamle. I also dedicate this thesis to my Ata (Grandfather) Marou Mimi, former elder of Mer. I was too young to remember Marou Ata but I have known him through the compassionate and respectful words and stories told to me by my parents Gara and Harriet Doolah and related by people in the Ailan community. Marou Ata was schooled in the Kole way he was an intellect (as all Ailan elders), a man of great wisdom and an inspiration to me and my people. I also
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dedicate this thesis to Mani Ata (my Grandfather John Bourne) after whom I was named. I also dedicate this thesis to Abu Daddy (Uncle George Mye) who was an Ailan elder and Ailan statesman. Finally I dedicate this thesis to my wife, Julia Alekseyevna Doolah, (née Litvinenko), and our three-year-old daughter Maria Johnovna Doolah.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Based on my Christian beliefs I thank the Lord Jesus Christ for His blessing. Without Him in my life I would not have begun and continued in my education journey and completed this postgraduate study, thank you Lord Jesus. Respect is always first and foremost in our Australian Indigenous culture pre- and postinvasion. Since I am an immigrant from the Torres Strait living and working on Aboriginal land, I first acknowledge The Pambalong Clan of the Awabakal Nation (and elders past and present) in whose lands the Callaghan Campus of the University of Newcastle where I study is located. In reinforcing the Ailan kastom (Island custom), social obligations and community acknowledgment, I am very grateful to the Ailan elders for their consultation and to my pamle (family) for providing me with all the information and the photos I have used in this thesis. Just to name few pamle, au esuau (a big thankyou) to my son Morris Cloudy, my bala (brother) Kas Seden, and my Doolah sisters Margret, Nancy, Elizebeth and Tarita and also au esuau to all Ailan people. I respectfully acknowledge Koiki Aua (Uncle Koiki Mabo) for putting Ailan people on the national and global map in regards to the indigenous struggle and for the information and examples of him I used in my thesis, au esuau Koiki Aua. Au esuau to my balas (brothers) Father Dalton Cowley and Mua Sailor, for the time they gave me to discuss the Ailan culture and our Erubam le and Meriam le families and social connections. Regarding my studies and academic life, au esuau to Tracey Bunda and to Dr. Joe Perry for their support and for believing in me and providing me the chance to realize the potential I did not realise I had. I enrolled at the University of Newcastle to do an Aboriginal Studies bridging course in 1990 within the first few weeks of our semester classes, Tracey saw my potential and encouraged me to enrol in the Diploma of Aboriginal Studies instead, for which I did and my high marks in the Diploma reflected how interested and motivated I was. Similar to the support I received from Tracey, from what I understand after graduating with a double degree it was Dr. Joe Perry who recommended me for a lecturing position at the University of Newcastle in 2006 to teach Aboriginal Studies. From Dr. Joe Perry’s recommendation, my tertiary learning was extended through my teaching and my experiences
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with the Indigenous and non-Indigenous, local, national and international students I taught in my semester classes for more than seven years. Au esuau to the former and current staff, my sisters at the Wollotuka Institute of the University of Newcastle for their support towards me as a student and continued to support me as a lecturer during my time at Wollotuka. The help and support they provided me for the little things as well as the big ones are of equal importance to me during my 14 year journey of learning at university. To those who helped and supported me au esuau (big thankyou) to Deirdre Heitmeyer, Denise Emmerson, Cheryl Newton, Mandy Kelly, Adelle Grogan and Renee Chambers. Renee I have not forgotten about the time you bounded copies of my research thesis before I took them over to the Office of Graduate Studies for submission. I promised I will bring you a present and I will drop it in to you when next I visit Wollotuka.
Au esuau to my research supervisors Dr. Greg Blyton and Dr. Joe Perry of the Wollotuka Institute for providing me the academic as well as the Indigenous support I needed at the University of Newcastle, especially at the end of my thesis. I felt their support was directed first toward me as an Indigenous person and second as a postgraduate student. I consider without the first I could not successfully have functioned as a postgraduate student. I understand that our Indigenous identity can also present a challenge particularly for the support of Indigenous students and staff at the university. Regarding my situation Dr. Greg Blyton is to be commended as an example of how he managed the challenges he faced and at the same time provided the support I needed from the time I began my postgraduate studies, to jump the hurdles together with me in the situations I faced in my research until its completion, thanks brother.
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ABSTRACT
The migration of the Ailan pipel (Island people) from the Torres Straits to mainland Australia presents specific challenges to contemporary Indigenous cultural practices and the unique Ailan Kastom (Island Custom). Factors relating to the nature of indigenous migration will be discussed because of the indigenous context of the Ailan (Island) migration account. The indigenous storytelling account and secondary sources re-interpretation and re-analysis will provide a valuable insight of the Ailan Kastom (Island custom) and Kole (white man) economic migration reasons from the Ailan cultural practices in the pre-and post-invasion period right to the present, covering topics of Ailan sharing and socio-cultural relationships, urbanisation and self-determination in tertiary education. The thesis will emphasis, highlight and elaborate on the reasons for the Ailan migration from an indigenous decolonising viewpoint with the application of the indigenous research methodologies in adherence to indigenous research protocols. Historical analysis provides an overview of the affect and progress of colonisation and the shift of Ailan and Kaurareg Aboriginal communities from their homeland (countries). This research is focused on the migration and urbanisation within the 1960s and 1970s timeframe by critically discussing specific events of Ailan (Island) and Kaurareg Aboriginal people in the Torres Strait regions of Australia and in the Australian mainland urban setting.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY ......................................................................................ii DEDICATION ......................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................vii CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................... viii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES...................................................................................... xiii GLOSSARY OF TERMS ....................................................................................................... xiv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 1 1.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Chapter 3 Methodo(ology) ................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Chapter 4 How to Read this thesis ....................................................................................... 2 1.4 Chapter 5 The Story ............................................................................................................. 3 1.5 Chapter 6 The Journey ........................................................................................................ 4 1.6 Chapter 7 The Migration Experience ................................................................................... 5 1.7 Chapter 8 Ailan Resistance .................................................................................................. 5 1.8 Chapter 9 Establiahing Foundation and the Effect .............................................................. 6 1.9 Decolonisation process ........................................................................................................ 6 1.10 Migration focus period....................................................................................................... 7 1.11 The traveler and learner ..................................................................................................... 8 1.12 My cultural introduction .................................................................................................... 8 1.13 Conclusion of introduction .............................................................................................. 13
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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................. 14 2.1 The migration ..................................................................................................................... 14 2.2 The indigenous migration .................................................................................................. 18 2.3 Internal migration............................................................................................................... 22 2.4 Ailan migration research .................................................................................................... 25 2.5 Migration and urbanisation ................................................................................................ 26 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................... 35 3.1 Ailan research methodology .............................................................................................. 35 3.2 Why apply Indigenous research methodology and protocols? .......................................... 35 3.3 Insider researcher ............................................................................................................... 39 3.4 Messy Texts and Storytelling conventions ........................................................................ 41 3.5 Researcher reflexivity ........................................................................................................ 43 3.6 Storytelling design ............................................................................................................. 44 3.7 Indigenous ontologies, exiology and epistemology ........................................................... 45 3.8 My Ailan ontology ............................................................................................................. 46 3.9 Qualitative research ........................................................................................................... 49 3.10 Data sources ..................................................................................................................... 50 3.11 Primary, Secondary and Tertiary documentary resources ............................................... 51 3.12 Interdisciplinary Social Science sources .......................................................................... 52 3.13 Secondary data collection techniques .............................................................................. 52 3.14 Endnote X6 data library and citation software ................................................................ 53 3.15 Ethical considerations ...................................................................................................... 54 3.16 Ailan elders consultation.................................................................................................. 55 3.17 Informed consent ............................................................................................................. 56 CHAPTER 4: HOW TO READ THE THESIS ....................................................................... 57 4.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 57 4.2 Reading the topics of the migration account...................................................................... 57 4.3 Drawing from other colonised Indigenous experiences..................................................... 60 4.4 Ailan specific terms of references...................................................................................... 62 4.5 Cultural approach ............................................................................................................... 65
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CHAPTER 5: THE STORY .................................................................................................... 67 5.1 Different social context ...................................................................................................... 67 5.2 Yarning approach ............................................................................................................... 67 5.3 Ailan knowledge ................................................................................................................ 68 5.4 Migrating to the mainland.................................................................................................. 70 5.5 Not a typical story of a child growing up .......................................................................... 70 5.6 Rich Ailan family cultural practice .................................................................................... 71 5.7 Meriam tribal divisions ...................................................................................................... 71 5.8 Human life and organisation of society ............................................................................. 73 5.9 Torres Strait ged ................................................................................................................. 74 5.10 Human migration ............................................................................................................. 74 5.11 Not a permanent migration .............................................................................................. 76 5.12 Practical social cultural experience .................................................................................. 76 5.13 Cultural roles and family responsibilities ........................................................................ 78 5.14 Nene's story before Christianity....................................................................................... 79 CHAPTER 6: THE JOURNEY ............................................................................................... 81 6.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 81 6.2 A sharing society................................................................................................................ 81 6.3 Cultural adoption ............................................................................................................... 82 6.4 My research journey as an Ailan man................................................................................ 83 6.5 My Y journey ..................................................................................................................... 84 6.6 Sap lubabat journey............................................................................................................ 86 6.7 Sagar people wind identity................................................................................................. 87 6.8 Beginning of the migration story ....................................................................................... 90 6.9 Memories of important events ........................................................................................... 92 CHAPTER 7: THE MIGRATION EXPERIENCE ................................................................. 95 7.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 95 7.2 Thursday Island urban experience ..................................................................................... 95 7.3 Rude shock ......................................................................................................................... 99
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CHAPTER 8: FOUNDATION FOR RESISTANCE ............................................................ 103 8.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 103 8.2 The Company Boats and Ailan autonomy ....................................................................... 103 8.3 New, stricter local Protector ............................................................................................ 104 8.4 Sharing giving and returning ........................................................................................... 105 8.5 Restricting cultural obligations ........................................................................................ 105 8.6 Strike the Ailan way......................................................................................................... 106 8.7 The struggle ..................................................................................................................... 106 8.8 Fighting back ................................................................................................................... 108 8.9 Paternalistic exclusion and restriction ............................................................................. 109 8.10 Army Taime ................................................................................................................... 109 8.11 First time relationships of equality ................................................................................ 111 8.12 Discontent and neglect ................................................................................................... 111 8.13 Ailan women army taime contribution ......................................................................... 112 8.14 Negative experiences .................................................................................................... 113 CHAPTER 9: ESTABLISHING FOUNDATION AND THE EFFERT .............................. 115 9.1 The concept of migration and Eurocentric Kole boundaries ........................................... 115 9.2 Interdisciplinary view of cultural account ....................................................................... 115 9.3 How we measure up to the Kole ...................................................................................... 116 9.4 Decolonisation approach highlights Kole influence ........................................................ 116 9.5 Ailan rights to self-determination .................................................................................... 117 9.6 Push and pull migration factors ....................................................................................... 119 9.7 Kole and culture approach ............................................................................................... 120 9.8 Traditional and post-invasion background....................................................................... 120 9.9 Managing change ............................................................................................................. 121 9.10 Twenty year focus 1960s to 1970s................................................................................. 122 9.11 Analysing traditional economy ...................................................................................... 124 9.12 Trade .............................................................................................................................. 126 9.13 Kole paid employment system ....................................................................................... 127 9.14 Chapter conclusion......................................................................................................... 127
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CHAPTER 10: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................ 130 10.1 Overall analysis and integration and research conclusions............................................ 130 10.2 Metholological Limitations............................................................................................ 135 10.3 Limitations of the Researcher ........................................................................................ 137 10.4 Limitations of the Research ........................................................................................... 137 10.5 Strength of Research ...................................................................................................... 137 10.6 Applications for research findings ................................................................................. 138 10.7 Future research directions .............................................................................................. 139 APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................ 143 Appendix 1 Screenshot copy of Copyright permission for Torres Strait Map ...................... 143 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 144
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LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURES
Figure 1: A map of the Torres Strait Islands.............................................................................. 1 Figure 2: Big Daddy Harry Whaleboat and Big Ama Akazee Whaleboat. ............................... 3 Figure 3: Dato Geoffrey Doolah teaching at Cherbourg Mission State School 1959. .............. 4 Figure 4: Nene Charlotte Buri Doolah. ...................................................................................... 7 Figure 5: Mer with clan boundaries.. ......................................................................................... 9 Figure 6: Dauar and Waier. ...................................................................................................... 30 Figure 7: Dato Bora and Nene Mareja Bin Juda.. .................................................................... 39 Figure 8: The Doolah maternal linage. .................................................................................... 45 Figure 9: Dad and Mum. .......................................................................................................... 49 Figure 10: The Wind-circle of Meriam identities .................................................................... 51 Figure 11: Tribal dividions of Mer.. ........................................................................................ 54 Figure 12: Big Daddy Elia Doolah's family............................................................................. 58 Figure 13: Dato Napoleon Doolah. .......................................................................................... 62 Figure 14: Sammy Daddy's family. ......................................................................................... 64 Figure 15: Vicky and Taiby. .................................................................................................... 65 Figure 16: Uncle Rete Doolah’s place.. ................................................................................... 78 Figure 17: Big Daddy Elia Doolah and Pastor Don Brady. ..................................................... 82 Figure 18: Uncle Rete and family. ........................................................................................... 88 Figure 19: Universal World Church Ministers. ....................................................................... 99 Figure 20: Men of Erub who served in Australian Military Forces 1945.. ............................ 110 Figure 21: Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion.. ................................................................. 113
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GLOSSARY OF TERMS This glossary of terms and expressions used in this thesis are listed below alphabetically in descending order. The glossary includes words from languages used in the Torres Strait by Ailan pipel, languages from the Eastern Islands: Meriam Mir and Kala Lagaw Ya, and Kalakawal of the Western Islands. The glossary also contains Torres Strait Creole and Aboriginal English terms and words mostly used by the researcher, researcher’s pamle and extended pamle. The origin of the word or term will be in brackets following the definition and without brackets if the origin is not known. Some of the terms are contemporary terms and in some instances are expressions of both Torres Strait languages and creole.
Term
Definition (origin of term)
abung
eldest brother or head of the family (Asian origin)
adud tonar
bad manners, wrong way of behaving or doing things (Meriam Mir)
ad le
outsiders, those who do not belong (Meriam Mir)
Aka
grandmother (Kala Lagaw Ya)
ailan
‘island’ in Torres Strait Creole, but it is also used in context to mean ‘Torres Strait Islander’. The term Ailan is sometimes spelt Ilan.
ailan kastom
island custom describing a social practice that is unique and common among all Torres Strait Islanders (Torres Strait Creole)
ailan pasin
Ailan or Torres Strait Islander way of doing things (Torres Strait Creole)
Ailan pipel
Island people or Torres Strait Islander people (Torres Strait Creole)
Ama
mother or aunty (Meriam Mir)
Apu
mother (Meriam Mir)
Apu le
mother’s people (Meriam Mir)
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army taime
‘army time’ is the period of World War Two when the Ailan people participated in the war effort in Far North Queensland so therefore all events which took place in that period took place in army taime (Torres Strait Creole)
Ata
used to designate either the grandfather or grandmother (Meriam Mir)
Athe
grandfather (Kala Lagaw Ya)
Aua
uncle (Meriam Mir)
au esuau
big thank you (Meriam Mir)
Au ged boai
mainland people (Meriam Mir)
au nar
ship (Meriam Mir)
Au sissy
eldest or older sister (Meriam Mir/Torres Strait Creole)
Awahdeh
uncle (Kala Lagaw Ya)
Bab le
father’s people (Meriam Mir)
Badu
Torres Strait name for Mulgrave Island
Bakei
west wind (Meriam Mir)
Bebe
Aunty (Asian)
beizam
tiger shark (Meriam Mir)
big pipel
adults (Torres Strait Creole)
Boigu
one of the Top Western Islands of the Torres Strait close to the coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Boigu is about eight kilometres from PNG and one of the 17 inhabited islands of the Torres Strait. Its European name is Talbot Island. The language of the Boigu people is Kalakawal
Dato
grandfather (Asian origin)
Darnley Island
European name for Erub in the Torres Strait. Darnley Island was the official landing site of the London Missionary Society (LMS) on July 1, 1871, who first landed there before spreading Christianity throughout the Torres Strait (see Zuli One)
Dauan
one of the Top Western Islands of the Torres Strait close to the coast of PNG. Dauan is one of the 17 inhabited islands of the Torres Strait. Its European name is Mount Cornwellis Island. The language of the Dauan people is Kalakawal xv
Dauar
one of the two smaller islands of the Mer group in the Torres Strait (Meriam Mir), spelt Dowar in other sources
Dauareb
belonging to Dauar Island (Meriam Mir)
Dauer pek
one of the three major tribal divisions of Mer the other two are Meriam pek and Komet pek
debe tonar
good custom, a good way of behaving (Meriam Mir)
deumer
Torres Strait pigeon (Meriam Mir)
Erub
an island on the far eastern part of the Torres Strait. Erub is inhabited by the Erubam le (Erub people), Indigenous people of the Torres Strait (Meriam Mir)
Erubam le
a person or people from Erub in the Torres Strait (see Erub)
gared
gouthern division of Sager (see Sager) (Meriam Mir)
ged
place or land (Meriam Mir)
gedub
garden (Meriam Mir)
gedub boai
an order of Meriam people classified according to their spiritual identity. The Piadram and Samsep clans of Mer belong to this order (Meriam Mir)
gelar
law (Meriam Mir)
gubba
an Aboriginal term for white man. The term was used in the 1800s to describe the white government, government man (gubba-min) then gubba (Aboriginal English)
gur
sea (Meriam Mir)
gesep
earth (Meriam Mir
gesepge
here on earth (Meriam Mir)
Giralag
the Kaurareg Aboriginal name for Friday Island, an island in the Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya)
giz
root of a tree or plant. It can also be used to designate a starting point or origin (Meriam Mir)
giz ged
a place in Mer where organisation of Meriam Society began (Meriam Mir)
golab
dry banana leaf (Meriam Mir)
Gudamalugal
Top Western Island group composed of three islands of, Saibai, Boigu, and Dauan. These islands are in the northern most part
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of the Torres Strait region and are closest to the coat of Papua New Guinea Hammond Island
the European name of the Island located in the Torres Strait, a 15 minute ferry ride northwest of Thursday Island.
Horn Island
the Kaurareg name for Horn Island is Ngarupai. An airfield was built there on Horn Island during World War Two. It is still in use as the main air-strip and Airport for the Torres Strait.
Isem
the name of the village in Erub in the Torres Strait (see Erub)
Irewed ziai
west-southwest wind (Meriam Mir)
Kala Lagaw Ya
language of the midwestern island group of the Torres Strait including the Kaurareg Aboriginal people living in the lower southern parts of the Torres Strait near the Cape York Peninsular of the continent of Australia (see Kaurareg)
kara Lu giz
my ancestry (Meriam Mir)
kara nosik era nei
my clan name (Meriam Mir)
Kaurareg
Aboriginal people of Australia located in the Torres Strait, who have lived there since time immemorial before the European invasion. The Kaurareg Aboriginal people are different from the Ailan people of the Torres Strait. So there are two groups of Australian Indigenous people living in the Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya), it is also spelt as Kowrareg in other sources.
kemer kemer
the whole, complete (Meriam Mer)
kes
passage of water, or a space between two objects (Meriam Mir)
Kie Daudai
the larger continent of Australia to the south of the Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya)
Kiriri
the Kaurareg Aboriginal name for Hammond Island (see Hammond Island) (Kala Lagaw Ya)
koki
northwest wind (Meriam Mir)
Kole
the white man (Meriam Mir) or the term can be used in context to refer to anything that belongs to the white man or xvii
of European origin. Because the term Kole is of an Ailan (Island) cultural origin it does not refer to the race of a person but is a reference to a person or institutions of a different culture. This view is a celebration of ‘diversity’ and uniqueness and is a stance within the Torres Strait Islander world-view. Komet pek
one of the three major tribal divisions of Mer; the other two are Meriam pek and Dauer pek (Meriam Mir)
korpor
navel (Meriam Mir)
korsamer
a butterfly or moth, lubabat of the Warwe people of Warwe village of Mer (Meriam Mir)
Kaiwalagal
the inner islands are located in the lower western regions of the Torres Strait closest to Cape York. The group is comprised of Kiriri (Hammond Island), Waibene (Thursday Island), Muralug (Prince of Wales Island) and Ngurapai (Horn Island). As the administrative centre for the region, and government organisations are located in Waibene. The Kaiwalagal group of islands are the traditional lands and territories of the Kaurareg Aboriginal people in the Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya)
Kotor
Heaven (Meriam Mir)
Kotor ge
in heaven, in the heavens or the sky (Meriam Mir)
Kulkalgal
Central Island group composed of comprised of Iama (Yam), Warraber, Poruma and Masig (Kulkalgal)
lamar
spirit or ghost (Meriam Mir)
lavalava
a cloth of rectangular shape worn as a skirt by the men. It is of Polynesian origin but has become the traditional dress for Torres Strait Islanders
le
people (Meriam Mir). The term has other meanings and used in different context but is used here in this thesis in a restricted context
lubabat
totem (Meriam Mir)
Mabuaig Island
the Midwestern Island of the Torres Strait
Maluilgal
in a term for the Midwestern Islands of the Torres Strait such as Mabuiag, Badu and Moa. The term is also used in this xviii
thesis to refer to an Indigenous person from the Midwestern Islands (Kala Lagaw Ya) Mama
mother
Mared
eastern division of sager, the southeast wind (Meriam Mer)
Masig
European name of Masig is Yorke Island. The island is the of Central Island group in the Torres Strait
Maway
Kaurareg Aboriginal name for Wednesday Island in the lower western part the Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya)
Mer
an Island (Meriam Mir) on the far eastern part of the Torres Strait. Mer is inhabited by the Meriam le (people), who are the Indigenous people of the Torres Strait. Mer is the larger Island, part of the Mer group of islands belonging to a group of three. The other two smaller islands in the Mer group are Dauar and Waier. The European name of Mer is Murray Island (see Murray Island)
Meriam
is a term used to designate people, person, place or things belonging to people of Mer, Ugar and Erub of Eastern Torres Strait. The term was also used by anthropologist A. C. Haddon to designate people or person of Mer (Meriam Mir)
Meriam le
person or people from Mer in the Torres Strait, also used to describe the region of the Eastern Island group (Meriam Mir)
Meriam le ra ged
refers to the Eastern Island group in the Torres Strait, Mer, Ugar and Erub (Meriam Mir)
Meriam Mir
Indigenous language of the people of the main three Eastern Islands of the Torres Strait which are Ugar, Erub and Mer
Meriam pek
one of the three major tribal divisions of Mer the other two are Dauer pek and Komet pek (Meriam Mir)
migaloo
a term for white man used by Aboriginal people in Queensland (Aboriginal English)
Moa
also called Banks Island, a large island located in Midwestern Torres Strait. Moa contained the two resettlements of the Saint Paul Mission and Kubin village of the Kaurareg Aboriginal people.
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Mugie Daudai
the Continent of PNG, to the north of the Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya)
Muralag
the European name is Prince of Wales Island in the Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya)
Muri
the European name is Mount Adolphus Island in the Torres Strait (Kala Lagaw Ya)
Murray Island
European name for Mer in the Torres Strait
my korpor e berem dere
my umbilical cord or after birth is buried there in my country (Torre Strait Creole statement)
Nagi
the European name is Mount Ernest, an island of the Central Island group of the Torres Strait
naiger
true northeast wind (Meriam Mir)
nap/napa
grandchild (Meriam Mir)
nei
name (Meriam Mir)
Nene
grandmother (Asian origin)
nener
boundary markers (Meriam Mir)
Ngarupai
the European name is Horn Island (Kala Lagaw Ya)
nosik
clan, but can also be used in cultural context to emphasise pamle (see pamle) (Meriam Mir)
ome
fig tree (Meriam Mir)
Pachie
Uncle (Asian)
pamle
‘family’, the term can also be referred to the extended family, as well as the overall Torres Strait Islander community (Torres Strait Creole)
pasin
a way of behaviour (Torres Strait Creole)
pek
division (Meriam Mir)
Piadram clan
one of the eight major clans of Mer (Meriam Mir)
Puruma
the name for Coconut Island of Central Island group
respek
respect (Torres Strait Creole)
Sab
north wind (Meriam Mir)
Sager
southeast wind (Meriam Mir)
Sager people
the group of people of the Eastern Islands of the Torres Strait whose villages are located on the southeast side of their islands (Meriam Mir) (see sager) xx
Saibai
a topwestern Island of the Torres Strait. It is 8 kilometres from the Papua New Guinea coast
Saibailgal
person from the Topwestern Islands of the Torres Strait or someone from Saibai Island
Samsep
one of the Indigenous clans of the Eastern Islands of the Torres Strait (Meriam Mir)
Samsep Meriam
one of the three divisions (Pek) of Mer’s Indigenous clans of the Eastern Islands of the Torres Strait (Meriam Mir)
sap
driftwood, and also the term for the totem of the Sager people, one of the social divisions in Meriam society (Meriam Mir)
sap lubabat
driftwood totem of the Sager people of Mer (Meriam Mir) (see sap and lubabat)
Seg
in the Ailan mythology Seg is the name of six of Tagai’s crew of 12. This crew of six became the constellation of Orion (Meriam Mir) (see Tagai)
Seim
a village of Erub in the Torres Strait
Solwata
salt water (Torres Strait Creole)
South
is mainland Australia, although it designates one of the four directions in a compass, in the Torres Strait Creole, it takes on the meaning and the name of the place south of the Torres Strait. In Torres Strait Creole meaning and conversation South can be substituted for mainland Australia
Stephen Island
Stephen Island is the European name for Ugar in eastern Torres Strait (see Ugar)
Tagai
in the short version of the story, Tagai the leader and his crew of 12 men went fishing and Tagai left his men for a short while. When he returned they had drank all his fresh water and in his fury he slaughtered all of them. Tagai and his crew became the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere. The left hand of Tagai is the Southern Cross. Six of Tagai’s crew are Usiam (the Pleiades) and the other six are Seg (Orion) (Meriam Mir)
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In the Kala Lagaw Ya version of the story the 12 crewmen of Taigai are called Zugubals (beings who took on human form when they visited Earth). Six of the crew are Usal (the Pleiades) and the other six are Utimal (Orion) (Kala Lagaw Ya) tawi
brother-in-law (Torres Strait Creole) ‘naiwet’ in Meriam Mir
teter mek
footprint (Meriam Mir) (also see yaba teter mek)
Thursday Island
European name for Waibene, an island in the Torres Strait. Thursday Island is sometimes referred to by its abbreviation ‘TI’. Thursday Island is the commercial centre of the Torres Strait. In the past from the 1860s to 1960s, TI was the centre for the pearling industry in the Torres Strait, which was the largest industry in far north Queensland
Torres Strait Creole
is an English-based creole language also referred to as Torres Strait Pidgin, Yumplatok, Torres Strait Brokan/Broken, Cape York Creole, Lockhart Creole, Broken English. Spoken throughout the Torres Strait, and in the South-Western Coastal Papua region and Northern Cape York of mainland Australia
TI
abbreviation of Thursday Island, which is occationally substituted for Thursday Island
Tudu
a Torres Strait name, the European name is Warrior Island of the Central Island group of the Torres Strait
u
coconut (Meriam Mir)
u ni
coconut water (Meriam Mir)
Ugar
is an island on the far eastern part of the Torres Strait. Ugar is inhabited by the Ugarem le (people), who are Indigenous people of the Torres Strait (Meriam Mir)
Usiam
in Ailan mythology Usiam is the name of one crew of six of Tagai’s crew of 12. This crew of six became the constellation of the Pleiades (Meriam Mir). The Kala Lagaw Ya term for Usiam is ‘Usal’ (see Tagai)
wag
wind (Meriam Mir)
wag/kerker
seasons and seasonal winds (Meriam Mir) xxii
Waibene
the Kaurareg name for Thursday Island (Kala Lagaw Ya)
Waier
one of the two smaller islands of the Mer group, Dauar is the other (Meriam Mir)
Waraber
European name is Sue island of Central Island group of the Torres Strait
Warwe
a village on Mer, also the title of the Meriam people of that village. Warwe is spelt differently in other sources (Meriam Mir)
wauri
cone shell (Meriam Mir)
yaba teter mek
‘the footprints that belong to them’, ‘their footprints’ (Meriam Mir) (see teter mek)
y
coconut apple, a sweet spongy edible flesh (cotyledon) that forms inside the coconut
Yam
European name is Turtle-Backed Island of the central island group in the Torres Strait. Yam refers to Iama.
Yam vine
Islanders’ bush telegraph system that operates actively through their churches, dance groups, sports activities, pubs, as well as kinship and Eastern or Western Islander networks
yarning
the preferred Indigenous term for storytelling because it describes the social process of how Indigenous people tell their stories
yumpla
a plural meaning ‘we’, ‘we all’ or ‘all of us’ (Torres Strait Creole)
Zenadth Kes
the local cultural term for the Kole name of Torres Strait
Ziai
southwest wind (Meriam Mir)
Zuli One
In July 1st 1871 the London Missionary Society (LMS) led by Reverend Samuel McFarlane made the first official landing and religious contact with the people of Erub when they went ashore at Kemus Bay. On July 1st each year since Ailan pipel commemorate the landing with a celebration, including a re-enactment of that landing. Ailan pipel call the event the ‘Coming of the Light’ or Zuli One (July One) (Torres Strait Creole)
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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction In this Introduction chapter I will: 1) provide a brief outline of the Torres Strait Islander migration study; 2) provide an outline and rational for each of the chapters of this thesis, from Chapters Three to Nine; 3) introduce myself in a cultural way; and 4) elaborated in the discussion reasons why I did the research. For my family and friends be prepared my thesis contain photos of some family members and individuals that have passed away.
Figure 1: Map of the Torres Strait Islands. 1 Torres Strait map courtesy of the Australian Art Network
This Torres Strait Islander migration story is a three part account composed of: 1) events before the migration; 2) the mainland migration itself; and 3) events after the migration which is a brief urbanisation account. My Torres Strait Islander migration study is a complete social account and therefore all of the chapters and the topics of the chapters are linked because of
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Mer (Murray Island and Erub (Darnley Island are at the far right in the Eastern Torres Strait. Waiben (Thursday Island) is in the lower western region near Cape York.
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the yarning method used in my research. I reasoned that the concept of migration did not exist in the pre-invasion cultural practice of the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait because of the important cultural connection to ged (land). My focus is not on the migration itself but equally in my research intent to decolonise the migration and highlight cultural factors associated with the migration and Ailan social practices. Therefore, the contents of all the thesis chapters are a decolonised cultural account of the migration. The outcome of my study and its purpose should be beneficial to Torres Strait Islanders and I will discuss this in the paragraphs below. I will begin with a brief outline of the chapters of this thesis beginning with Chapter Three.
1.2 Chapter 3 Method(ology) In Chapter Three I adopted Indigenous methodologies methods and framework for this postgraduate research because I reason that my research topic of Torres Strait Islander Migration and the research focus involved emphasizing Torres Strait Islander socio-cultural practice behind the migration. The Indigenous yarning (storytelling) method is used to document the memories and experiences of Torres Strait Islanders associated with the migration and secondary Torres Strait Islander Migration sources including sources from the indigenous peoples of the world was used to reinforce the migration yarn linking with the accounts of the yarn. The Indigenous yarning method allowed the use of the decolonization process because the process permits the expression of the Islander culture in the migration account that is free from post-invasion Kole (white man) influence and also since the yarn is told from a Torres Strait Islander view-point.
1.3 Chapter 4 How to Read this Thesis My research uses an Indigenous research framework and one of the research strategies is the use of a Torres Strait Islander cultural approach within the yarn, written expression and style and in the topic discussions. The discussions take place within a Torres Strait Islander cultural space which is not familiar to non-Islanders and therefore clarification of how to operate within this cultural space is needed. Instructions were therefore necessary to help the reader to navigate within the Island cultural space, concepts and philosophies whilst reading the cultural account of the migration in the topic discussions of the thesis chapters.
Chapter Four provides instructions of how to read the contents of the chapter topics and explains why the use of Islander terminologies, cultural concepts and philosophies was 2
necessary. The whole research of the migration is a Torres Strait Islander socio-cultural account and yarning of the social account require links to connect the social events together since the cultural topics are discussed in different social context throughout the chapters. Each chapter of this thesis is part of a social account of the Torres Strait Islander migration so therefore the social contents of the chapters link all the thesis chapters together.
Figure 2: Big Daddy Harry Whaleboat and Big Ama Akazee Whaleboat
1.4 Chapter 5 The Story The story of Chapter Five provides the background for the Torres Strait Islander migration account by the elaboration of the origin of my people through my cultural concepts. Although I use my Erubam and Meriam connection I reason and argue that my story belongs to the Indigenous people of Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait). This is why I explain my tertiary education and life’s journey in Chapter Six not only as an Erubam le and Meriam le but that of a Torres Strait Islander ged (place) person. I had to establish my connection in the Torres Strait in Chapters Five and Six to provide a strong cultural foundation in order to justify our cultural practice to highlight the Torres Strait Islander cultural practice behind the migration. The events of my childhood in the Torres Strait reflect the changes our people went through postinvasion under colonial rule and how the migration experience began in the Torres Strait and I was part of it and part of the south (mainland Australia) migration experience.
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Figure 3: Dato Geoffrey Doolah teaching at Cherbourg Mission State School 1959. Courtsey of John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland Neg: 34399
1.5 Chapter 6 The Journey In this Chapter Six I discuss the Ailan cultural concepts and philosophies to highlight resistance to the Kole culture and influence from a cultural standpoint from the place and space of my ancestors. The place of my ancestors is a decolonized space it’s an anti-colonial response position justifying a cultural response. My Ailan migration account is a learning journey and using my Ailan cultural concepts and philosophies to describe my tertiary education and research journey is appropriate as well as reinforcing my Ailan cultural approach and the focus of my research. I elaborated on my cultural concepts through an example of the value of money. I use my lubabat (totem) and the cultural concept of a coconut seed to reinforce our Ailan seafaring identity and my Zenadth Kes origin and in addition give meaning to my journey as Erubam le and Meriam le and as a Torres Strait Islander. I include my parents account in the Torres Strait and discuss the strictness of the Kole control they lived under. I also reasoned the Torres Strait was the beginning of the Ailan migration account.
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1.6 Chapter 7 The Migration Experience The Torres Strait Islander migration account is an urbanized account. In Chapter Seven I discussed the beginning of our migration experience which first took place in the Torres Strait at Waibene (Thursday Island/TI). The TI experience was an urban experience because it was different to the Ailan cultural way of life in the local outer island communities. In TI I began to experience the Kole influence including racism and the processes of assimilation. I elaborated on the Kole influence by discussing the changes to the Ailan way of life and the Torres Strait economy which provided the push migration factors for Ailan pipel. I use my TI urban experience to highlight the effect of Kole influence through the political activities of my family and extended family. The political involvement of my people in the Torres Strait is a reflection of changes in Ailan and Kole relations. These changes are marked by activities of resistance which will be discussed in the next Chapter Eight.
1.7 Chapter 8 Ailan Resistance The activities of Torres Strait Islander resistance discussed in this Chapter Eight include the 1936 Torres Strait Islander Maritime Strike, and army Taime (Army Time) events of World War Two. In the Torres Strait, Islanders were given the opportunity to be autonomous when they were allowed the freedom to operate and manage their own boats (Company Boats) but their autonomous freedom was short lived when they were subjected to the control of the Aboriginal protection policy and the implementation of strict government regulations over their lives. Through the restrictions and implementation of the Aboriginal Protection Act Torres Strait Islanders were dispossessed for the second time and the control, ownership and management of their company boats was taken away from them which led to the 1936 Torres Strait Islander Maritime Strike. The issues discussed in the events of the strike in this chapter shows how Torres Strait Islanders has had enough of the Kole control over their lives and decided to take action through a strike and subsequent activities of resistance.
Resistance in army taime is another account which provided push and pull migration factors for Torres Strait Islanders. Army taime is the term for the period of World War Two. For the first time in more than seventy years since the Kole controlled Islanders that they experienced equality while serving with non-Indigenous personnel in the Australian army. Their experience of equality also provided pull factors for the Torres Strait Islander migration when they learned of the opportunities available to them outside of the Torres Strait and away from
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government control. The actions of the government to influence the restriction on the army wages of Torres Strait Islanders is also discussed in this Chapter Eight.
1.8 Chapter 9 Establishing Foundation and the Effect In this Chapter Nine I discuss how the influence is highlighted through the process of decolonisation and argue that overall the Torres Strait Islander migration is a selfdetermination move. My research focus of 1960s and the 1970s was a period of significant change in Indigenous affairs. It not only was a period where self-determination was introduced into Indigenous policy in Australia but also a period in which I was able to emphasise the strong Torres Strait Islander cultural practice in the migration account because of the strong cultural practice of my parent’s generation, the generation of the first Torres Strait Islander immigrants. I also emphasise on the migration push and pull factors, the power and control in the Torres Strait to highlight the situation of Torres Strait Islanders. I discuss how Torres Strait Islanders managed changes to their culture by dealing with issues in Kole society in their own cultural way or face the alternative of assimilation. How Islanders fit into society in their own cultural way, through their own terms of reference underpins the topic discussion in this Chapter Nine. I included discussions on the pre-invasion traditional trade activities to provide a foundation to reinforce the integrity of the strong Torres Strait Islander cultural practice and allow me to argue a strong cultural base for my Torres Strait Islander migration yarn.
1.9 Decolonisation process The decolonization process used in this Ailan migration research is a deconstruction and construction process where the understanding of Torres Strait Islanders are deconstructed in the research and a new understanding is constructed. By using the decolonisation process in my research I provide a fresh look at the Torres Strait Islander migration, of the accounts of Islanders beginning in the Torres Strait region and the urbanized Torres Strait Islander migrant account on mainland Australia where the people had resettled and worked. Torres Strait Islander society is diverse composed of five unique cultural groups of Islander and Aboriginal peoples in Island communities located in their traditional territories in the Top Western, Mid Western, Inner Islands, Central and Eastern regions of the Torres Strait. Cromwell (1980, p. 25) described a mixed Islander mainland migrant population of diverse Torres Strait identities based on the Torres Strait regions I mentioned. According to Sharp (1993, p. 9) ‘by 1980 half of the Islander population was living on the mainland.’ 6
Figure 4: Nene Charlotte Buri Doolah. This photo of my Nene was taken at the house I grew up in at TI.
1.10 Migration focus period The research is focused on events of the Torres Strait Islander migration between the 1960s and 1970s. The events of this chosen period will be discussed in the Islander migration accounts in this thesis which includes changes in Australian Indigenous policies affecting Torres Strait Islanders which comprise post-war events. This was also a period where selfdetermination was introduced to the Australian Indigenous policies and discussed in this research as a push factor behind the Torres Strait Islander migration. Self-determination in the Torres Strait Islander migration involves the processes of decolonization and adopting an anti-colonial stance in the research through the use of my Indigenous research methodologies and yarning method and developing research strategies for an Indigenous research of a local Ailan community by a Torres Strait Islander researcher such as a cultural strategy and research approach.
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1.11 The traveler and learner This research is part of my life’s journey and part of the overall Torres Strait Islander migration experience for which I am part of. I use concepts and the philosophies of the Ailan culture to describe my journey because my journey through life including my research and tertiary education journey involves multiple social activities, shared relationships within the framework of Ailan culture and Ailan paradigm. I describe my journey through the cultural philosophy and concepts of one of my lubabat (totem) the sap (driftwood). My nature is the nature of the sap, a nature of the traveler and learner. The journey of the sap is the journey of life beginning from the Torres Strait my place of origin gesepge (on earth).
1.12 My cultural introduction I will start the introduction of myself in my research through establishing what the introduction of oneself means to Indigenous peoples by providing two examples of its Indigenous use in research and relating it to my situation. My introduction will begin from my origins in the Torres Strait to the account of my migrant childhood and adult life down south (mainland Australia).
I am inspired by the cultural ways of introduction by two Aboriginal Australian women from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Quandamooka First Nation (Moreton Bay) in Queensland Australia, the first, Keonpul woman Aileen Moreton-Robinson and second Noonuccal woman Karen Martin who is also of Bidjara ancestry (central Queensland) (Martin 2014, pp. 3, 296; Moreton-Robinson 2000, p. xv). Although I have provided information about myself in the chapters of my thesis, those information, including my Ailan ontology and diagrams of my linage are based on and are extensions of the cultural introductory information of myself I will now provide.
My Erubam and Meriam heritage and that of my people of the Torres Strait is as follows: My name is John Doolah. I am the second eldest of six children. My siblings are Napoleon, Vicky and Tiby, Mareja and Sineba. My father Gara Doolah is the eldest son of Napoleon and Atima Doolah. Sammy Daddy (Uncle Sam) is second eldest followed by twin sisters Aunties Mina and Mareja then Goryor Daddy (Uncle Goren) then Siti Ama (mum Sitiano). Dad had a younger sister after Siti Ama her name was Bunga and she died a baby and is not recorded in the Doolah’s maternal linage diagram of Figure 8. Figure 14 is a photo of dad Sammy Doolah and his family. 8
Figure 5: Mer with clan boundaries 2
2
Source: Haddon, 1935, p. 160
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Dato Napoleon is the eldest son of Rete and Auke Doolah as in Figure 8 of the Doolah lineage diagram. His siblings include, Dato Charlie, Dato Geoffrey and Nene Mina Seden (née Doolah), Nene Bunga Cedar (née Doolah), and Nene Mareja Bin Juda (née Doolah). Figure 7 is a photo of Nene Mareja and Figure 3 is of Dato Geoffrey Doolah. Dato Geoffrey was a 1944 World War Two evacuee from TI who made his way to the Aboriginal Mission of Cherburg on the mainland where he was a monitor (teacher’s assistant). He remined at Cherburg after the war and passed away single without any children.
My ancestry is an Indigenous ancestry and a reflection of the complex practicing Ailan social relationships and connections. According to Ailan oral stories my ancestry are of Asian, West Indies, Pacific Islander, South Sea Islander and Torres Strait origin. Upon declaring my ancestry, I claim it because firstly, it is who I am as a complete Indigenous person not based on Kole racial classifications and social constructs where through my cultural philosophical argument I would have been classified as one fifth human. Secondly, because kara Lu giz (my ancestry) are a combination of the generations of my apu le (mother’s people) as well as my bab le (father’s people), this means I not only have the extended family of my mother as my pamle (family) but include the extended family on my father’s side. Thirdly, I claim it because my ancestry is based on the Ailan cultural concept of pamle, inheritance, nosik (bloodline) and giz (origins). In addition based on my cultural concept of Ailan pamle (Island family) I claim my Torres Strait Islander heritage identity as an Indigenous person from the regions of the Torres Strait as part of my seafaring ancestry.
I have pamle from the Western Islands of the Torres Strait (because of my linage of the combination of my father and mother’s people), but declare my Erubam and Meriam heritage of Erub and Mer in the Eastern Islands and regions of the Torres Strait. My Grandfather is Napoleon Doolah a Samsep Meriam man from Mer who married my Grandmother Atima Doolah (née Dawita) of the Piadram clan of Mer. My father Gara Doolah is an Erubam and Meriam man from Warwe village in Mer. My mother Harriet Doolah (née Bourne) is of Meriam heritage from the village of Zaub in Mer. Through my Meriam social identity I am incorporated into the Meriam society of the Torres Strait through a complex social system composing of interconnecting reciprocal relationships and social divisions through Meriam nosik (clans), wag pek (wind divisions), lubabat, (totems), social status and ged (land, sea and sky) (Sharp 1993, pp. 54-57, 302; Sharp 2002, p. 119). The interconnecting relationships I
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just described are of multiple identities, since by relationship association these identities designate Meriam (the person).
Of the eight clans of Mer, I am of the Samsep nosik (clan) of the Samsep Meriam Pek (division) of Mer. My lubabat (totem) are the sap (driftwood), the deumer (Torres Strait pigeon), the beizam (tiger shark) and korseimer which is the lubabat of the Warwe people of Warwe village. A village is part of ‘the Meriam territorial social system.’ (Sheehan 2012, p. 4) I also belong to the Meriam social divisions of gedub boai (garden people, an order of Meriam spiritual identity) and belong to mared which is the eastern division of sagar (the southeast wind) (Figure 10 Wind Identities). Therefore, I can be identified as belonging to the sagar people or the sagar clan of Mer. I am also identified according to my celestial link to Gergerneseur (the Morning Star) of mared (Sharp 1993, pp. 54-57, 302). These identities, positions including roles and responsibilities are reinforced in the social practices of Torres Strait Islanders in their Torres Strait homeland and on mainland Australia. In both Torres Strait and mainland locations the practice of the Ailan culture remained strong and therefore the early Ailan migrants who first resettled on the mainland (my parents’ generation) were still getting use to the Kole way of life and their activities did not reflect a strong Kole influence thus contributing a rich source of Ailan cultural activities which I am able to emphasise in my Ailan migration account.
My father and mother were ministers of the Universal World Church (a charismatic Pentecostal Christian Church) and they moved to wherever they were posted in different Queensland towns. The places where I grew up in mainland Australia including with my parents are the places where I lived with my other dad’s and mum’s Big Daddy’s and Big Ama’s as I wrote in my migration account. The mainland Queensland towns I grew up in as a child include, Hughenden, Innisfail, Townsville, Rockhampton, Mackay and Brisbane. Most of my immigrant life down south (mainland Australia) I spent growing up in the home of my Big Daddy Harry Whaleboat and Big Ama (his wife) Akazee and Big Daddy Elia Doolah (see Figures 2 and 12 ). Big Daddy Elia, Big Daddy Harry and Big Ama Akazee Whaleboat were also ministers of the Universal World Church. Beckett wrote about the Universal World Church Christian movement in Australia in his Torres Strait Islander migration account which according to him started in Australia in the 1970s (Beckett 1987, pp. 230, 231). The 1960s and 1970s period was the time of the biggest migration from the Torres Strait (Beckett, 2010, pp. 63, 64). Most of the Ailan migrants were members of the Christian church (Beckett 11
1987, pp. 230, 231). Again for the second time since the first-time conflict from 1871 between Ailan culture and the Christian religion, Torres Strait Islanders were faced with a similar culture and religion conflict situation. It was against the religious beliefs of Ailan Christian immigrants to practice aspect of their culture which was considered ‘too worldly’ as stated in Graham’s (1996) interview with Uncle Donald Whaleboat in the following quote:
At that time most of Islander families here in Townsville, all the Islander families who work on the railways, joined the Universal World Church. And with the doctrine of the Church, they were going against people doing Island dancing. They said that is too worldly.
I provided information of my Christian up-bringing because it is part of the Ailan migration account, relating to the confused state I had been in. I provided accounts of my own school experiences as a child in Chapter Seven and the confused state I was in as an immigrant from the Torres Strait. My school experiences affected my learning and my ability to learn. When we consider the stage I am currently in as a post-graduate research student which is the result of returning to school to pursue tertiary studies, it’s a reflection of the Torres Strait Islander migration experience and the struggle for our rights to self-determination. From my migrant experience and my generation of Ailan migrants our employment choices were influenced by our roles models, our dad’s and most of them worked on the railways, in low paid labourers jobs. Tertiary education was not an option, speaking from my own experiences which I discussed in the chapters of this thesis especially in relation to the negative experiences I had at school.
I left school and worked with my dad on the railways. My railway career began from 1976 to the 1980’s where I left Queensland (QLD) and continued railway employment in New South Wales (NSW). My railway career included a Ganger/Supervisor position which entails track construction. In that position I constructed new sections of the track throughout NSW and eventually established myself in Newcastle. In 1990 I left the railways to undertake tertiary studies at the University of Newcastle.
In 1992 I graduated with a Diploma in Aboriginal Studies and in 2004 graduated with a double degree, a Bachelor in Aboriginal Studies and a Bachelor in Applied Science (Consumer Science). Two years later in 2006 I worked on contract lecturing in Aboriginal Studies at the University of Newcastle and later Torres Strait Islander Studies where I
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lectured and developed Indigenous Studies courses until 2013. My contract ended and I focused as a student in fulltime postgraduate studies. My decision to continue through postgraduate studies is about how I came to understand the meaning of self-determination for Islanders based on my childhood, and adult experiences from my memories of my Torres Strait beginning to my immigration experience on mainland Australia.
1.13 Conclusion In conclusion I found that I was able to relate what I had learnt to my disadvantaged Indigenous community experiences in Australian society and how our struggle is different from other Australians because of the Indigenous experience of colonialism. I had become more fully aware of the impact of colonisation and its effect and influence on my life and the life of my people, especially after undertaking tertiary studies. During Aboriginal Studies for my undergraduate degree I learnt about what colonisation did to Torres Strait Islanders and Aboriginal peoples especially in regards to its effect in our contemporary Indigenous situation. I reason that my struggle is an example of an overall Indigenous experience in Australian society.
Because of our social links to our local Indigenous community the struggle and resistance to colonization and colonialism involves processes regarding exercising Indigenous rights to self-determination and decolonization. Understanding the Indigenous rights to selfdetermination and the processes of decolonization is the basis for choosing my thesis title, ‘Decolonising the Migration and Urbanisation of Torres Strait Islanders from the Torres Straits to Mainland Australia between the 1960s and 1970s’. Self-determination in relation to issues regarding Indigenous migration and Ailan migration is discussed in the social context of my yarn in the chapters of thesis including the Literature Review chapter of my thesis.
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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 The migration This literature review will provide information regarding migration which is a new postinvasion concept introduced into Torres Strait Islander discourses. Migration is a new phenomenon for the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait since the concept of leaving their traditional land for resettlement in another country did not exist in the pre-invasion culture of Torres Strait Islander society. The decolonisation process is employed in the research analysis to highlight the concepts of migration separating its Kole application from Ailan cultural factors and factors relating to indigenous migration including the research of indigenous peoples.
Research has helped in the colonisation of indigenous peoples and therefore, the application of the decolonisation process in this postgraduate study addressed the negative dehumanising effect of colonialism in research (Battiste, 2000, p. xvi; Brown, 2011, p. 89; Corntassel, 2012, pp. 86-89, Youngblood, 2000, p.11). The migration research of Torres Strait Islanders is a decolonised postgraduate study. The migration information covered in this literature review will also include discussions about indigenous migration, regarding specific migration factors of Torres Strait Islander migration using Indigenous and non-Indigenous sources. There is a gap in the Torres Strait Islander migration account which this research will fill contributing to the bigger body of migration studies including the sub-category indigenous migration study. The emphasis in this postgraduate research of Ailan culture, and cultural claim in the Ailan migration account will fill in a gap in the Ailan migration study. Torres Strait Islanders, referred to as Ailan pipel (Island people) in Creole (Watkin, 2009, p. viii) throughout this thesis, journeyed away from the Torres Strait region during the preinvasion period in reciprocal partnership trading ventures with the people of Papua New Guinea to the north, and to the south, the Aboriginal people of mainland Australia (Rivers and Wilkin, 1908, pp. 182, 183). These pre-invasion trading ventures does not constitute migration but demonstrates that the culture of the Indigenous people of the Torres Strait was not isolated on the contrary these trade journeys established cross-culture relationships long before foreigners invaded the Torres Strait. After colonial rule was implemented in the Torres 14
Strait region, the traditional trade ventures ended and the Ailan pipel were restricted to the region of the Torres Strait, (Sharp, 1993, p. 9) when the colonial government’s segregation policies made the region an Aboriginal mission. From the 1940s however, documented evidence shows that a few Ailan pipel entered mainland Australia, although the islands of the Torres Strait and its Indigenous peoples were still functioning under restricted Kole segregation policies (Moore, n.d.). After 1940 serious migration of Ailan pipel for the purpose of resettlement and in search of employment opportunities began and will be discussed in the following paragraphs. Before looking at the topic of Torres Strait Islander migration in Australia and addressing the focus of this postgraduate research study, providing information on the background of migration in necessary. It is necessary therefore as well as internal migration, to look at international migration because of factors that are significant to this research in both internal and international migration. According to Trujano (2008, p. 15) factors relating to both types of migration are generally similar since the migration ‘definition includes both internal and international movements and does not favour any one type of migration over another.’ The first matter of significance for this study regards not only establishing a general setting for the migration research, but in addition, relate factors regarding indigenous migration and familiarize the reader briefly with the concept, nature and extent of migration using the funneling down approach narrowing down to the research focus of the Torres Strait Indigenous migration.
The general discussion of migration will also set the background that will contrast the research focus of Indigenous migration and in addition highlight the effect of colonialism on the colonized. This literature review will concentrate on migration information that is related to the focus and intention of this postgraduate research for example, the economic situation, job opportunities, Indigenous cultural factors, including factors of the Indigenous migration. The gap which this research will fill relates to factors of Indigenous migration unique to the local Indigenous Torres Strait Islander experience. The background information of migration will include a definition of what migration is therefore it is only appropriate to start with a definition of the term and Bhugra’s (2004, p. 129) broad definition is suitable:
Migration is a process of social change where an individual, alone or accompanied by others, because of one or more reasons of economic betterment, political upheaval,
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education or other purposes, leaves one geographical area for prolonged stay or permanent settlement in another geographical area.
Bhugra’s definition of migration is very broad but is useful towards describing the migration movements of ‘indigenous communities’ as reinforced by Trujano (Trujano, 2008, p. 15) and therefore applicable to the Torres Strait Islander migration account. In this day and age the reasons for the push and pull factors of migration have changed in comparison to the 1960s and 1970s period chosen for this research. I describe one aspect of migration by emphasising that in order to satisfy the global economy and global competitiveness countries embark in employment promotion strategies attracting migrant workers composing of ‘professionals, executives, technicians and other highly-skilled personnel’ (Castles et al., 2012, p. ii). In relation to job opportunities besides attracting highly-skilled and skilled migrants according to Castle et al., (2012, p. ii) students are also attracted as part of the migration mobility, since students are ‘often a precursor to skilled migration.’ This information about students describes a similar situation of the Ailan (Island) migration with the education opportunities and experiences of Ailan pipel in mainland Australia including the tertiary education journey of the researcher. The two decades period of Ailan migration in the 1960s and 1970s was primarily for unskilled job opportunities in the mainland which Beckett (2010, pp. 63, 64) reasoned that:
The migration was economically viable because the collapse of the Torres Strait economy coincided with a surge in the mainland economy, creating a demand for the kind of work [unskilled] that Islanders could perform, so that more and more came south during the 1960s and 1970s. As wives and even aged parents joined their sons, the migration became a resettlement—soon with a generation of mainland- born Islanders.
As with the Ailan migration, low skilled and unskilled immigrants also migrate especially for those from third world, war-torn or politically unstable countries seeking refugee status for humanitarian reasons (Hardy, 2009, p. 3). However, the economic reasons of migration are well established and favour those migrants with employment skills as studies in Canada show:
that, 7 years after arrival, those who came as family migrants or refugees had incomes that were 40 percent lower than those who migrated through the employment stream. Refugees
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were much more likely to depend on welfare benefits than other classes of immigrants. Other studies for Canada and Australia confirm that employment stream immigrants are the most successful in the labour market followed by family migrants and then refugees (CobbClark, 2006; Aydemir, 2011) (Ferrie and Hatton, 2013, p. 22).
In relation to Torres Strait Islander migration although it was internal migration in contrast to the above international migration discussion, the generation of Islanders who did migrate in the 1960s and 1970s were: 1) low or unskilled immigrants; 2) not properly educated; and 3) not Kole savvy (Gaffney, 1989, pp. 25, 38). Their success however was not based on their skills to secure highly paid jobs in mainland Australia but in escaping to freedom from the effects of colonial and government control in their homeland regions of the Torres Strait (Beckett, 2010, p. 70) to settle in urban communities in mainland Australia. Torres Strait Islanders being a cultural group quickly established network kinship family groups on the mainland which contributed to the migration (Mosby, 2013, p. 3; Watkin, 2009, p. 62). Those who migrated first settled with a home and job on the mainland were able to help other new immigrant family members from the Torres Strait. It seems the practice of establishing oneself and then helping new migrants is part of the migration process, as Ferrie and Hatton (2013, p. 5) explained: Once established migration streams cumulated as previous emigrants provided new migrants with pre-paid tickets for the passage, food and shelter on arrival, and established immigrant networks to help gain access to job opportunities.
Similar to Ferrie and Hatton, Beckett (2010, p. 68) provided his networking account of the Ailan migration process claiming: The Islanders’ entry into the mainland labour market, and life on the mainland generally, was made easier because they already had kinfolk living in northern Queensland (Hodes 1998). These were people of mixed descent, so technically they were not ‘under the Act’, some of whom had come down before the war; others resettled during the war and failed to return to the islands afterwards. These recognised their Islander kinfolk and showed them hospitality.
Compared to Ferrie and Hatton, Beckett’s networking account however, emphasises factors associated with the indigenous migration experience, factors that reinforces Ailan cultural values and practices in the migration which are the focus of this research. Beckett’s statement 17
shows pamle (family) responsibilities and obligations to the extended family. Ailan kinship responsibilities were the cultural practices which help establish Ailan communities throughout mainland urban Australia (Beckett, 2010, p. 68; Cromwell, 1980, p. 25). Fisk in his 1970s Torres Strait Islander census report highlighted a factor where Ailan migrants had difficulty renting houses and therefore had to depend on the family cultural hospitality of relations. Dr. P. R. Nielsen, leader of the Universal World Church in Townsville had close contact with large numbers of Islanders families. He [Nielsen] said that Islanders in Townsville and Cairns had great difficulty in obtaining adequate housing. As a result families with houses frequently had to ‘put up’ families or part families temporarily without housing, with consequent overcrowding (Fisk et al. 1974, p. 6).
Fisk’s quote also reinforces the kinship cultural obligations which are part of Ailan migration. Therefore, the comparison of Beckett, Fisk, Ferrie and Hatton’s account is used again but this time to contrast differences relating to indigenous migration highlighting cultural factors which is what the Torres Strait Islander migration focus in this research is about. The Ailan cultural and migration factors are divided into two primary areas of the research inquiries. The first is focused on the Indigenous culture and second on the effect of colonisation and Kole influence in the Ailan migration account hence the need to decolonise the research. 2.2 Indigenous migration As the focus narrows to Torres Strait Islander migration we discuss factors associated with indigenous migration, including rights to self-determination since Trujano (2008, p. 16) claimed, ‘Indigenous peoples’ migration raises specific issues from a human rights perspective which recognizes indigenous peoples as rights holders with an active role in decisions that affect them.’ In regards to the Torres Strait Islander mainland migration can the reason for Ailan pipel freeing themselves from Kole control in their Torres Strait homeland (Sharp, 1993, pp. 35, 155, 169, 171, 177, 193, 197, 204, 215, 222, 225), be seen as exercising Torres Strait Islander Indigenous rights to self-determination? Were there any specific human rights issues in the Torres Strait Islander migration?
The Torres Strait Islander Act 1939 does not apply to Ailan pipel or Ailan communities on mainland Australia because the mainland is not traditional Ailan territory (Watkin, 2009, pp. 42, 55; Loos & Mabo, 1996, p. 93). In a similar way the Torres Strait Regional Council
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(TSRA) a national body representing Ailan pipel does not represent Ailan pipel or Ailan communities on mainland Australia but only those living in the Torres Strait regions (Lawrence and Lawrence, 2004, p. 27) and some of TSRA’s policies do not cover the Kaurareg Aboriginal people in the Torres Strait because of their Aboriginal identity. It seems the definition of the Ailan immigrant status according to Watkin (2009, p. 6) is not ‘found in relevant legislation or related policy documents’ such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and even a government body set up to monitor Ailan immigrant ‘policy issues’ did not define its mainland status. With no definition of the Ailan immigrant status in the Australian government system this means that the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait does not have full representation in Australian society whether they reside in their homelands or mainland Australia. This resents a gap in the Ailan migration research that is addressed in this postgraduate study and factors relating to indigenous migration, building on Watkin’s Ailan migration information. Therefore, the migrant status of the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait in mainland Australia presents issues which are specific to indigenous migration.
The following are pertinent questions relating to indigenous migration and the situation of Ailan migrants living in mainland Australia. Do Ailan pipel lose their Indigenous status in mainland Australia because the mainland is not their traditional territory and they are being considered assimilated into Kole society? The flow-on question is how are Ailan people dealing with integration into Australian society? Have Ailan immigrants lost their Ailan identity whilst living in the mainland, is a question presented by Trujano regarding migration issues faced by indigenous peoples (Trujano, 2008, p. 8)? How government acts and policies apply to Indigenous Ailan pipel in Australian society because of the migration is an issue of indigenous migration which Trujano (2008, p. 18) discussed claiming: For this reason, important issues of identity and integration of indigenous communities relate to their migration. It has been suggested that indigenous communities that are no longer present in their territories, or who have changed their traditions to accommodate their new realities, should no longer be considered indigenous and no specific or special treatment should be afforded to them based on those claims. In other words, it is often held that indigenous identity is lost when a community appears to have assimilated, when it is no longer present in its ancestral territories or if it has embraced non-indigenous behaviour (Roney, 2003).
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The cultural aspect of indigenous migration have been documented by Indigenous and nonIndigenous authors therefore the gap in the migration study that I am filling in my research regards building on the Ailan cultural factors in existing migration studies of Ailan pipel. These Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors described and emphasised cultural practices in the migration which are significant to Ailan pipel and influenced their behaviour (apart from the Kole influences), such as matters relating to continuity, Ailan socio-cultural practices, maintaining connections, kinship practices, return migration, the effect of colonialism and escaping to freedom from government control (Beckett, 2010, pp. 63, 64, 68, 70, 71; Mosby 2013; Sharp, 1993, pp. 9, 10, 35, 39, 40, 41, 155, 169, 171, 177, 186, 193, 197, 204, 215, 222, 225, 226, 227, 246, 247; Shnukal 2001; Watkin, 2009; Pitt, 2005). This research will concentrate and build on these Ailan cultural factors within the literature and factors of indigenous migration to fill in a gap in the Ailan migration study. On a global scale the Torres Strait Islander migration research is part of an incomplete study area, using the sub-category of indigenous migration study as a gauge because the situation of Ailan migration is similar to other indigenous migrant communities of the world. The issue of territoriality discussed in the above paragraphs is one example of the issues relating to indigenous migration. The situation that indigenous migrants are faced with (Ailan immigrants included) is in areas that need more research to better understand indigenous migration issues and inform policy makers as Trujano (2008, p. 8) reasons: An emerging literature on the migration of indigenous peoples has begun to supply some answers. Anthropologists, historians and economists have published an increasing number of articles and books over the past 15 years, using diverse questions and methods. However, official data on the migration of indigenous peoples as well as policies to aid indigenous migrant communities remain limited.
Trujano (2008, p. 13) continues with factors of indigenous migration and the ‘current state of research’ in regards to ‘the very limited participation of indigenous scholars on the effects of migration in their communities.’ Ailan migration studies conducted by Indigenous researchers of their own community fall within that research limitation Trujano mentioned and the research limitation will be discussed further in later paragraphs of this literature review, including discussions on the Ailan migration studies conducted by Ailan researchers. The limitation of indigenous scholar’s participation in indigenous migration constitutes a research priority part of which this postgraduate study is addressing. Trujano also provided
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information about a common area of concern by indigenous scholars such as regarding ‘issues of treaties and laws, official recognition and identity, or economics and development’ (Trujano, 2008, p. 13). Choosing to focus on Ailan cultural factors within the migration in this research and addressing the research limitation factor fills a gap in the Ailan migration study.
The connection of indigenous peoples to their traditional territories and culture complicates the migration, since ‘[m]odern migration of indigenous peoples is characterized by its complexity in response to new conditions of industrialized and globalized lives’ (Trujano 2008, p. 7). One example in the complexities of indigenous migration is the issue of transborder migration. The term transborder is used in Trujano (2008) to describe transborder indigenous migration, where international borders of modern nation-states divide the ancestral territories of indigenous groups and also divides many indigenous peoples and their traditional lands. Movements of the indigenous peoples from one nation-state border territory to another even if the indigenous groups are moving within their own ancestral territories these movements are considered international migration (Trujano, 2008, p. 15).
Expanding further on the complexity indigenous migration, Trujano (2008, p. 7) reasons it is because indigenous peoples (including Ailan pipel) are ‘deeply rooted in their territories and customs, and reluctant to accommodate change.’ The changes do not include total assimilation into Western society and a permanent migration status but the struggle as migrants: 1) to maintain the indigenous identity, this includes a declaration of one’s indigenous identity and connection to their local indigenous society; 2) was about dealing with racism and issues of social justice; 3) for equity; and 4) for the recognition of indigenous rights, including the rights to self-determination outside of their indigenous homelands.
The issue of total assimilation and permanent migration although suited for discussions regarding the international and transborder situations, but nevertheless could be argued (within the Ailan cultural focus perimeter of the postgraduate research) as also applicable to the internal Ailan migration situation in Australia. The basis of the argument would be about continuity and maintaining the Indigenous identity and never severing the Ailan connection to the Indigenous homeland. For this reason the distance away from home whether in an overseas country, the technical transborder situation or the internal migration situation of
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Ailan people, from an Indigenous argument perspective distance does not matter but the issue is resettlement as migrants in a foreign location outside of the indigenous homeland.
2.3 Internal migration The internal migrant status of Ailan pipel warrants a recognition post-Mabo of mainland Aboriginal First People’s status in true cultural fashion, respecting and acknowledging the Aboriginal lands where Ailan migrants have resettled. Filling the gap in the Ailan migration study is about the decolonization process of emphasizing and highlighting the cultural complexities in the Ailan migration account which Pitt (2005, pp. 38, 39) and Nakata (1997, p. 29) argue is otherwise ‘simplified’ through the Kole (Eurocentric) knowledge system. Highlighting and emphasizing the complexities in the Ailan migration account is about providing an Indigenous account of the migration which is substituted for Eurocentric reasoning and influencing Kole values.
In this study the application of Eurocentric knowledge is restricted because it is linked to colonialism. The forces of colonialism adversely affect Ailan pipel and their society (Watkin, 2009, pp. 41-62). Therefore it was necessary to limit the application of the Eurocentric knowledge systems (Western Knowledge) in this postgraduate study which involves applying the process of decolonization in the research and research process. Mullins discussed ‘decolonisation’ in reference to the continuing push for Ailan autonomy through a number of fronts including the efforts of the Torres United Party (TUP) in the 1970s (Mullins, 2001, p. 23). The decolonizing movements of the Ailan community are different from decolonization in research but both nevertheless have a common goal for all the colonized people of the world and that is freedom from colonialism.
The decolonization process of the Ailan community experience and the application of the process to the Ailan migration research will be discussed in this literature review because it was used in this postgraduate study to bring out Ailan cultural factors which otherwise through colonialism have been: 1) restricted; 2) ignored as being irrelevant; and 3) dominated by Kole valued and influenced research, particularly with the use of the positivist, objective Kole scientific research model which ‘has not involved Aboriginal people in research about themselves’ (Absolon and Willett 2004; Ermine et al. 2004; Sherwood, 2006, p. 185). Objective Kole scientific research which Indigenous Maori scholar and researcher Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p. 39) refers to in the concept of ‘[o]bjectification [which] is a 22
process of dehumanization. In its clear links to Western knowledge research has generated a particular relationship to indigenous peoples which continues to be problematic.’ A look at the history of indigenous research and discussing Kole research methods in the next paragraph is necessary to understand the effect of colonialism, the problems of Western knowledge and scientific objective research and its overall reference to this postgraduate Ailan migration research.
The foundation for indigenous research developed in history from what Indigenous Cree scholar Shawn Wilson (2001, p. 215) described as a Kole research activity in which the ‘colonisers, adventurers and travelers researched the indigenous Other through their ‘objective’ and ‘neutral gaze.’’ Travelers and observers provided their information (stories) of indigenous peoples which then became the foundation for the understanding of indigenous peoples (p. 215). The problem with this historic research beginning for indigenous peoples is that they are left out of the research with no participation due to the objective research method and ‘silenced in the social sciences,’ an expression used by Indigenous Mi'kmaw scholar and educator Marie Battiste (Battiste, 2000, p. xvi). The use of the decolonization process in research allows for indigenous community participation and for indigenous researchers researching indigenous peoples.
Smith continues reasoning the use of indigenous participation in research by arguing that colonial domination of indigenous peoples took place in a particular human cultural and ‘social system that needs to be decolonized’ (Wilson 2001, p. 215). This context establishes the basis for re-evaluating the research position of Torres Strait Islanders to provide clarity and a research representation which is reflective of the current interdisciplinary indigenous research discussions. Smith also justifies the continuing indigenous struggles against the perpetuating colonial legacy by rejecting the term ‘post-colonisation’ because she reasoned it implies that the destructive process of colonialism on indigenous peoples no longer operates in contemporary society. Contrary to the latter, ‘colonialism continues to have a profound impact on indigenous peoples’ (Wilson 2001, p. 215).
The historical research of Ailan pipel was never correct representations because it was conducted through concepts of colonial domination and power relations from the blueprint for Western knowledge formation.
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Western culture has frequently identified itself as the ethnocentric centre of legitimate knowledge. Tuhiwai Smith, however, critiques dominant Western discourses of knowledge and objectivity by demonstrating how Western stories and “regimes of truth” are situated within a particular cultural, social system that needs to be “decolonized”. Western research brings with it a particular set of values and conceptualisations of time, space, subjectivity, gender relations and knowledge. Western research is encoded in imperial and colonial discourses that influence the gaze of the researcher (Wilson 2001, p. 215).
The argument it presents here for the Ailan migration research concerns the research intent, the researcher and the research process. The Ailan migration studies by Torres Strait Islander scholars and researchers provide a valuable source for this postgraduate research. Sources from non-Indigenous researchers on Ailan migration are equally valuable and both are used in combination to reinforce the decolonized yarning account of the Ailan migration and to fill a gap in the overall migration study. Ailan and non-Islander researchers and their migration research will be discussed in the next paragraphs as this literature review finally narrows down to the Ailan migration situation.
After World War Two in 1950, Ailan pipel began ‘migrating’ to mainland Australia (Arthur, 2003, pp. 3, 4) and established urban Ailan communities, for reasons that will be investigated as part of this study focus. This study deals particularly with Ailan mainland migration and urbanisation during the 1960s and 1970s, as a workable study-framework period. This timeframe was chosen because it was a period where a large group of Ailan pipel migrated from the Torres Strait to mainland Australia (Beckett, 2010, p. 63), in particular the author and his parents. In the 1970s the internal migration of the Ailan and Aboriginal people was first included in the National Census (Mosby, 2013, p. 2), so some statistics became available. Furthermore, the timeframe was chosen as a period for exploring the strong cultural reasons associated with migration, besides the Kole (white society) economic reasons that are mentioned in the Ailan migration study. It is anticipated that through analysis and synthesis of secondary literature a more comprehensive exploration can be undertaken of the extent of Ailan migration and urbanised living, revealing the struggle of the Ailan pipel in Australian society as a minority within a minority, and evaluating the effects of this migration on practicing Ailan culture (Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35). The ‘decolonised approach’ will provide a platform to discuss the Ailan cultural reasons behind this migration and urbanisation, which has not until now been the 24
principal focus of any Ailan migration research. It is anticipated that this literature review will fill a gap in the history of internal migration in Australia of one of Australia’s Indigenous peoples and therefore, on a broader scale, a gap in the documentation of the history of Australia. 2.4 Ailan migration research On the topic of analysing secondary sources and while there is acknowledgement in this literature review of the valuable contribution of non-Indigenous sources for this postgraduate migration research a discussion on maintaining a strong cultural viewpoint within the research is required to highlight the disadvantage in the use of secondary sources. The use of secondary sources also presents the issue of insider and outsider research. The discussion in the paragraphs of this literature review will be on the topic of outsider researcher and outsider contribution in relation to Torres Strait Islander cultural research, documentation and understanding through research.
The sources relevant for the Ailan migration account are extracted from small pieces of information located in the research literature which is used to emphasise and reinforce the Ailan cultural viewpoint in the migration account. This is not an easy task because most literature on Ailan pipel and society have been written by ‘outsiders’ and key evidence mentioned by these authors in passing can be found only through deep scrutiny of the texts (Pitt, 2005, p. 52). This is the major disadvantage of using secondary sources. To meet the research goal and research focus of this postgraduate study there is the need to highlight the limitations of the use of secondary sources and sources from outsider research. It is argued that some of the outsider research issues relevant to this postgraduate research include: 2) research conclusions based on Kole values, and Kole scientific reasoning over Ailan sociocultural values and reasoning; and 3) the lack of Ailan socio-cultural understanding and practices. This results in how information in the research is gathered, what information is revealed and the element of mistrust by the Indigenous research subjects (Sharp 1993, p. xv).
In the literature search the researcher have encountered statements and conclusions that reveal the limited understanding of outsiders to the Ailan culture where the values of Ailan pipel where not emphasised and the discussion were centered on topics that were not appropriate or relevant to the local Ailan society and culture. For example outsider sources which discuss the loss of Ailan culture may not elaborate on the extent of the cultural
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destruction because outsiders exist outside of the culture they are documenting. Sources which claim that the Ailan culture was not destroyed, contradicts the loss of Ailan culture claim. Sharp (1993) for example argued that Meriam culture was not destroyed by the Kole. She also states that some of the research information was of a secretive nature and not for outsiders claiming that ‘they [the Meriam people] didn’t tell the outsiders, even the anthropologists [A.C. Haddon] that went there [to Murray Island]’ (Sharp, 1993, p. 44). However, outsider sources are valuable sources for this postgraduate Ailan migration research and the decolonisation process and the discussions within the Ailan and Kole cross-cultural space of the mainland migration experience and account of Ailan pipel.
2.5 Migration and urbanisation The mainland migration and urbanisation of Ailan pipel will be seen through the perspective of the historical struggle for freedom from colonial domination, including the 1936 Torres Strait Islander Maritime strike that led to the change from being under the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, to the separate Torres Strait Islander Act 1939 (Beckett, 1987, pp. 51–54, 112, 102; Sharp, 1993, pp. 44, 181–196; Williamson, 1994, p. 180; Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35) and the equal wages strike during voluntary service in the Australian armed forces in World War Two (Beckett, 1987, pp. 63– 113), in a Torres Strait defence against a possible Japanese invasion. The Torres Strait Islander Act 1939 provided limited autonomy for Ailan piple because it does not affect Ailan migrants but only those living in the Torres Strait homeland regions. It is ironic that due to a matter in the choice of the location of where one chooses to reside for Ailan pipel would place limitations on their citizenship rights in Australian society. This issue is highlighted in the indigenous migration study of indigenous peoples as discussed in this literature review and part of the Ailan migration and urbanisation topics in the thesis chapters. A number of studies have examined the migration and urbanisation of the Alian pipel which have provided valuable secondary migration sources to address the Ailan cultural research focus of this postgraduate study (Beckett, 2010; Beckett, 1987, pp. 72, 177–180, 201–210; Taylor and Arthur, 1992, p. 1; Cromwell, 1980, pp. 24–26; Watkin, 2009, pp. 4, 9, 28, 29, 39–42, 55–144; Gaffney, 1989; Loos and Mabo, 1996; Lui-Chivizhe, 2011; Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35; Mosby, 2013, p. 3). The research of non-Indigenous academics and scholars on Ailan migration and culture are invaluable in documenting and capturing aspect of the Ailan culture their interest and expertise is much appreciated and the information of Ailan migration and culture contributes to the pool of rich sources used in this postgraduate study. 26
While Ailan migration sources from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors are valuable sources for this postgraduate research, these are different to the research contribution of sources using the yarning research method and documentation of life stories or testimonials such as the work Koiki Aua (Uncle Eddie Koiki Mabo) by Noel Loos, the autobiography of Ellie Gaffney (née Loban)(1989) and Lui-Chivizhe (2011). Lui-Chivizhe (2011, p. 38) argue life stories ‘contributed to an opening up of the academy to the rich potential of Indigenous memory and recollections of the past.’ These studies and this postgraduate research document our own Ailan experiences and using these published sources to back the migration account of this study help in documenting the unique situation of the local Indigenous group of Ailan pipel. This postgraduate research also fill a gap in limited research to what Trujano (2008, p. 13) argue as ‘the very limited participation of indigenous scholars on the effects of migration in their communities.’ This research fulfills this criterion and in addition contributes to enriching the study pool of the personal Ailan migration experience. Besides this postgraduate research the Torres Strait Islander migration research of Ailan woman Felecia Watkin also fills the limited indigenous migration research.
The Autobiography of Torres Strait Islander woman Ellie Gaffney is a valuable source of the Ailan culture highlighting Ailan and Kole cross-cultural activities that is used in the Ailan migration study to reinforce socio-cultural practices. Gaffney provided accounts of her migrant experience similar to the account of the researcher which is used in this postgraduate research to reinforce the Ailan migration cross-cultural activities. Gaffney’s experience include her life and childhood account in Waibene (Thursday Island) to the mainland where she undertook her nurses training and where she worked and eventually she returned back to Waibene in the Torres Strait to live.
Torres Strait Islander woman Leah Lui-Chivizhe’s article titled ‘Making history: Torres Strait Islander railway workers and the 1968 Mt Newman track-laying record’ contain valuable information source for this postgraduate Ailan migration research. Her scholarly argument regarding the different emphasis of memory and history and how it is beneficial as an Indigenous research approach which is similar to the Indigenous methodologies and yarning method used in this postgraduate research. Lui-Chivizhe (2011, p. 38) argue that:
[w]hile scholars can and do take issue with each other over how oral histories are collected, interpreted and used, the publication of these studies contributed to an opening up of the
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academy to the rich potential of Indigenous memory and recollections of the past. Additionally, the burgeoning field of Indigenous life writing, such as autobiographies, family biographies, and memoirs, is a powerful indication that memory and oral history continue to provide a critical avenue for Indigenous people to speak about their own experiences.
This research will build on the migration information and Ailan cultural information in LuiChivizhe’s article. Because of the limitations of this research the literature review will elaborate on the Ailan migration research of two Indigenous Ailan scholars, Mosby and Watkin. In her article titled ‘Using Metasynthesis to Develop Sensitising Concepts to Understand Torres Strait Islander Migration’ Torres Strait Islander woman Vinnitta Mosby cited from research statistics claimed that a number of factors had encouraged Ailan internal migration, including: ‘better living conditions, education, health and employment opportunities, and freedom from the Torres Strait Islander Act of 1939, which gave local councils more power over domestic life and island policing’ (Mosby, 2013, p. 3). This postgraduate research will build on Mosby’s Ailan migration reasons by separating Kole valued migration factors when highlighting her indigenous migration factors, for instance Mosby claimed ‘[m]igration is not always permanent or intended as such’ and also in her introduction Mosby claimed ‘[e]xisting migration studies tend to focus on the history and extent of mobility rather than seeking a deeper understanding from displaced people’s perspectives’ (pp. 2, 3). Mosby’s statement highlights the need for research from the perspective of the immigrants and of those who were forced to migrate, reflecting the migration from the Ailan account of her own displacement experiences (Mosby, 2013, p. 1). Mosby highlights an important factor of the Ailan migration which in the strict cultural sense whatever their reason(s) for the migration Ailan pipel are displaced people because they were forced to relocate, to move out of their traditional Indigenous territories to resettle in the lands of Aboriginal people beginning with the territory of the Kaurareg Aboriginal people in the inner island regions of the Torres Strait to the mainland of Australia and Tasmania. The Ailan migration account of this postgraduate study is an account of a displaced people because it highlights cultural factors and issues associated with indigenous migration.
There is another issue that needs emphasising and that is in regards to the reasons of the migration Mosby and others provided, by building on Mosby’s ‘deeper understanding from displaced people’s perspectives’ statement (Mosby, 2013, p. 1). In the 1960s and 1970s
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research framework of this postgraduate study job opportunities would have had precedence over the other reasons for the migration for that particular period based on the Ailan migration employment push and pull factors, for example the decline of pearling in the Torres Strait and cane cutting and railway work in mainland Australia (Beckett, 2010, pp. 63, 66, 67). It was also during this period that Ailan pipel depended on their strong Ailan culture to establish themselves in urban communities on the mainland and to continue the practice of the Ailan culture on the mainland. One factor highlighted in this postgraduate study was that visiting families and extended family did not find accommodation in hotels and motels but stayed with their Ailan relatives because of the racism they faced in the wider Australian society and also it would have been culturally inappropriate to stay in hotels and motels and not with family.
Mosby’s study is a valuable migration source for this postgraduate research and a valuable contribution to indigenous migration, as with this research. Her research method is different but nevertheless, highlighting Ailan cultural factors. The outcome of this research will be different from Mosby’s migration account because of the Ailan research methodologies, indigenous paradigms, indigenous yarning method, emphasising Torres Strait Islander rights to self-determination and the decolonising approach used in this postgraduate Masters research. The focus on Ailan culture in the Ailan migration is more in-depth in this postgraduate research than in Mosby’s eighteen page Ailan migration article. Similar assertion about the emphasis on Ailan culture can be made for the Alian migration account in other research of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers (Beckett, 2010; Beckett, 1987, pp. 72, 177–180, 201–210; Taylor and Arthur, 1992, p. 1; Cromwell, 1980, pp. 24–26; Watkin, 2009, pp. 4, 9, 28, 29, 39–42, 55–144; Shnukal 2001; Mosby, 2013, p. 3).
In her doctorate thesis titled ‘My Island Home: A study of identity across different generations of Torres Strait Islanders living outside the Torres Strait’ Torres Strait Islander woman Felecia Watkin provided a comprehensive research of Ailan migration (Watkin 2009). Her interviews of Ailan immigrants concerning the restriction in their colonization experiences make her research a valuable account and a rich documented source of the Ailan migration from her Torres Strait Islander perspective. Watkin’s study provides a rich secondary source of Ailan cultural factors associated with the Ailan migration for this postgraduate study to build on. In contrast to Watkin’s thesis some of the features of this
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postgraduate Ailan migration research is different to Watkin’s Ailan migration study and will yield an outcome to fill a gap in the migration study.
Figure 6: Dauar and Waier. 3
To fill a gap in the Ailan migration study, an Indigenous research framework was used. The use of an anti-colonial research approach and focus was required because of the chosen Indigenous research framework. The anti-colonial approach would widen the perimeter of the reasons for the migration and provide an emancipatory inquiry of the colonized other. Since it is an anti-colonial approach any benefits from the migration by the Ailan immigrants is not credited to Kole society because the benefits was through the exercise of the rights to Ailan self-determination regardless of the circumstances and whatever the migration reasons were for the Ailan migrants.
The different postgraduate research features of this study include: 1) the central Ailan cultural focus and emphasis of this research; 2) the decolonization approach which highlights Ailan socio-cultural factors expanding on the significance in the migration; 3) the use of Indigenous Methodologies and the yarning Indigenous research method; 4) the used of Indigenous Ailan paradigms; and 5) the use and declaration of Ailan concepts and cultural reasoning. All these
3
Dauar and Waier are the two smaller islands of the Mer group. Source: Haddon, 1935, p. 161
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features are unique to an Indigenous inquiry into Ailan society and a line of inquiry which will aid to fill a gap in the overall migration study and sub-category study of indigenous migration. An elaboration on the research focus in the next paragraph will show the research strategy(ies) and part of the decolonization process for highlighting significant cultural factors that are part of the social practice of Ailan pipel and society but have been dormant due to Kole influence.
From the context of this postgraduate research focus the reasons and inquiry of the Ailan migration are divided into two general categories. The first inquiry is based on the effect of Kole values, Kole influence and colonialism. The second set of reasons is based on pamle and kinship cultural obligations and obligations to the overall Torres Strait Islander society which include self-determination, connections and Ailan identity. Those immigrants of the 1960s and 1970s may not have intended to settle permanently in mainland Australia because of a number of cultural reasons and the justifications argued in this study. If we argue against the first intention being for permanent resettlement in the mainland, one argument for such justification is in the status of the migrants where the majority where single men, considering that both married and single men were unemployed in the Torres Strait homeland at the collapse of the pearling industry in the 1960s (Beckett, 2004, p.10). If the first intention was for re-settlement would there have been an even number of migrant mix of both single and married Ailan men? Beckett claimed that by the 1960s the immigrant population was more than five hundred, and the majority of these Ailan migrants were single men (Beckett, 1977, p. 99, 1987, p. 72). Koiki Aua (Eddie Koiki Mabo) who married Aunty Bonita, a lady from mainland Australia, was a single man who moved to the mainland. Another reason for migration was associated with alcohol consumption (Beckett, 2010, p. 69) which was an excepted social activity for Ailan pipel of that generation. This would apply to a good number of single men. The point here based on the large single men immigrant population status was that the original intention for both married and single men may have been to look for work in mainland Australia and send money back to families living in their traditional homeland (Watkin, 2009, p. 33). For the Ailan immigrants who first settled in mainland Australia, the decision to bring their families from the Torres Strait to the mainland was a post-migration after thought but still not with the permanent migration intention.
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To argue pro permanent migration based on cultural reasoning would be to discuss: discontinuity; 2) disconnection; 3) intention to fully assimilate into Kole society; 4) intention for permanent loss of Ailan identity; and 5) permanent resettlement on Aboriginal lands. Most of the Ailan resettlement was without the permission of the local mainland Aboriginal people regardless of whether Ailan migrants settled in towns and cities which the invaders built, the European towns and cities were still built on Aboriginal land. It should be an important cultural protocol for Ailan pipel considering that the pre-invasion cultural practice of both Ailan and Aboriginal peoples are established on Indigenous sharing (include first obtaining permission) and respect for another’s traditional territory. Out of respect we celebrate in ‘Welcome to Country’ and ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ ceremonies but these are different to asking permission to resettle on Aboriginal land. In light of our Indigenous history of dispossession the protocol for asking permission is pertinent toward maintaining and reclaiming our Indigenous heritage and in exercising our rights to self-determination. However, whatever the circumstances and reasons the migration push and pull factors which brought Alian pipel to the mainland where they eventually decided to settle did not include an intention to permanently settle on Aboriginal land as Mosby reasoned (Mosby, 2013, p. 3). In common with this postgraduate research and the other Ailan migration research by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, Mosby included strong cultural reasons as well because her study is from a Torres Strait Islander perspective. Emphasising and elaborating on Mosby’s cultural reasons is part of this postgraduate research focus. Therefore Ailan cultural reasons besides the Kole economic reasons of the Torres Strait Islander migration will be discussed in this chapter and the chapters of this thesis both of which are equally important to the Ailan migration experience. In continuing with the permanent migration issue the argument in this and following paragraphs are based on a situation of return migration which is not emphasised in the Ailan migration study possibly because firstly the political status of Ailan immigrants in Australian society and for the reasons of why the Ailan immigrant status is not being fully represented in statistics and government policies. Secondly because the internal migration status of Ailan migrants is different compared to the international and transborder migration status, both reasons were discussed in the previous paragraphs of this literature review. Pertinent to the anti-permanent migration argument, not all Ailan pipel migrated for this reason a permanent migration may not hold true for those that remained in the Torres Strait
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and did not migrate in the 1960s and 1970s. Additionally, permanent migration does not justify the movements of those Ailan immigrants who later left the mainland and returned to the Torres Strait homeland to live (Beckett, 2010, p. 70). My Uncle Rete Doolah and his family returned to the Torres Strait in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Figures 18 and 19 are photos of my Uncle Rete. The other reasons for the migration are based on a Torres Strait Islander cultural inquiry and are discussed further in its appropriate social context in the topics of my thesis chapters. Although most of the studies of the Ailan migration contain both aspects of the Kole economic reason and the dormant Ailan cultural reasons, further elaboration on the Kole economic reasons is necessary for this literature review to highlight dormant Ailan cultural reasons. The use of Kole research methodologies is a factor to be considered therefore in using Kole research methodologies: 1) the focus is on the economic aspects (minus a balanced Torres Strait Islander cultural emphasis) of the Ailan migration and urbanisation; 2) the outcome provides an inappropriate representation of Ailan pipel; and 3) are based on Kole values since Kole methodologies do not allow for emphasis and elaboration of the sociocultural activities of Ailan pipel. Conversely, a research focus based on Ailan culture more fully addresses the questions raised in this literature review. A gap exists (in relation to the other non-Indigenous migration reasons) in the studies of Ailan migration and urbanisation, which this research study will attempt to fill. By highlighting and emphasising these Torres Strait Islander cultural factors, associated with the migration and linking those to secondary sources, it will provide a fresh new look at the Torres Strait Islander migration account. Hence the cultural reasoning approach provides an alternate view of Ailan migration and urbanisation. The Torres Strait Islander migration is a documented historical movement of the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait. In its limited researched capacity the secondary Ailan migration sources of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and authors was a valuable source for this Ailan migration postgraduate research because of two specific reasons relating to addressing the research focus. The first, secondary sources are best sources to highlight and emphasise issues relating to decolonisation and suitable in regards to the limitations of this postgraduate study where field work was not possible. The second regards the use of the contents of existing Ailan migration sources in relation to the following factors: 1) to bring out dormant Ailan cultural factors in the text; 2) to reinforce the Ailan migration experiences in the
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yarning; and 3) to allow the researcher to build on Ailan cultural factors from Indigenous and non-Indigenous sources of the Ailan migration. Overall the research focus discussed in these concluding paragraphs addresses a gap in the Ailan migration study which has never been filled. The Ailan migration factors presented in this literature review are bound by the postgraduate study limitations thus the present research and its assumptions and conclusions.
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CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY
3.1 Ailan research methodology I have employed an Ailan-specific Indigenous research methodology because I have incorporated Ailan knowledge and socio-cultural understanding in the reinterpretation and retelling of my own story and memories, from the knowledge base of Ailan pipel. Kovach (2010, p. 41) clarifies the Ailan research methodology I am using by stating that ‘in a research project that incorporates an Indigenous methodology, the paradigm…would be Indigenous knowledge with specific contextual knowledge assumptions emerging from a particular tribal knowledge base’. Thompson (2008, cited in Kovach, 2010, p. 41) further states, ‘[s]he identifies her research as incorporating an Indigenous methodology, as shared among many Indigenous peoples, but based upon the contextual specifics of her Tahltan tradition’. In the next section, I discuss the Indigenous research methodology and the yarning research method and I explain how I have incorporated secondary data into my yarning research method. The use of secondary data means that I have partly combined Kole qualitative methods through my data collection with my primary yarning information. Despite the hybrid approach, I reason that it is still an Ailan research methodology because of the application of the Indigenous research paradigm that ‘consists of an ontology, epistemology, methodology, and axiology’ (Hart, 2010, p. 1), since otherwise as Martin (2003, p. 207) contended, ‘it is Western research done by Indigenous people’. By using the units of ontology, epistemology and methodology I am able to conduct research from an Indigenous Ailan perspective, because as Stewart (2009, cited in Kovach, 2008, p. 41) reasons, ‘the categorical units (of ontology, epistemology and methodology) are not simply more elastic, but shapeshift to accommodate a world-view outside of Western tradition’. 3.2 Why apply Indigenous research methodology and protocols? The qualitative research methodology for my research is an Indigenous research methodology using an Indigenous storytelling or yarning method. My research is also structured within an ‘Indigenist research framework’, a term used by Indigenous scholars such as Lester Irabinna Rigney (1999) and Karen Martin (2003). This represents a paradigm shift in research,
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through the challenges from Indigenous (Maori) academics Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Norman Denzin, Lester Irabinna Rigney and Errol West. My research is an Indigenist research because the Ailan paradigm forms the core structure of my research framework. Indigenous research methodology and the yarning research method have been used by Indigenous researchers internationally and locally in Australia, but not without criticism. Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010, pp. 37–50) claim that some academics from an Australian university have challenged yarning ‘as a research tool’. The academics criticised the yarning research methods of an Aboriginal student’s doctoral thesis claiming that it was not a bona fide research method and was not recognised as a legitimate tool for gathering data by Western academia. Bessarab and Ng’andu continue to claim that ‘[t]oday students still experience difficulty in applying yarning in their research because it is not recognised as a credible research method and is easily dismissed’. Kovach (2010, p. 42) continues the argument in favour of the Indigenous research methodology by highlighting the different philosophical belief systems or world-views between the Kole and Indigenous people reasoning that: [t]he nuances and complexities of an Indigenous paradigm may not be fully understood (or viewed as legitimate) by all members of the academy, but few would openly contest, at least in public spaces, that an Indigenous paradigm exists.
My Ailan world-view does influence the way I live in society, the way I behave socially even in my academic life and in how I conduct my research and collect my data. I have successfully learnt to use my Ailan world-view and the way I see the world to my advantage in my tertiary studies and in how I have written my essays and my assignments during my undergraduate studies. Like all other Indigenous students who have chosen the yarning research method and Indigenous research methodology, we draw our strength and support as Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010) contend, from ‘[t]he collaborative voices of Indigenous authors speaking out and validating Indigenous knowledge systems’. Storytelling, yarning, talk story, re-storying, or re-membering is a conversational method (Kovach, 2010). Kovach (2010, p. 40) provides the following details of the conversational method in relation to the application of Indigenous methodologies and storytelling in research, claiming that:
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The conversational method is a means of gathering knowledge found within Indigenous research. The conversational method is of significance to Indigenous methodologies because it is a method of gathering knowledge based on oral story telling tradition congruent with an Indigenous paradigm.
I had the option of using Kole Western research methodologies, theories and approaches, but reasoned the result would have been different and not beneficial to Ailan pipel and their communities. Meaningful and good research, according to Denzin and Lincoln (2008, p. 2), ‘is assessed in terms of the benefits it creates for them [Indigenous peoples]’. I believe Ailan pipel will benefit from my research if it is conducted through my Ailan research methodology and yarning method. There are a number of reasons why I chose the Indigenous research methodology and yarning research method, which I have rationalised throughout this thesis. The challenge I face as an Indigenous researcher in this account is to make sense of the colonial devastation and its effect on my people. I consider this Indigenous methodology is a preferred approach, through my understanding as a student of Aboriginal Studies of the effects of colonisation on Indigenous peoples, particularly on the Ailan pipel and Aboriginal people of Australia. My postgraduate research and my teaching of Aboriginal Studies at university also strongly dictate this approach as more valid. The best way, I feel, for me to assert my Indigenous voice is to use an Indigenous methodological framework in which I am able to ‘make sense from an Indigenous knowledge perspective’ of the key research issues (Denzin and Lincoln, 2008, p. 41). Research involves challenges including the challenges I was presented in this postgraduate research. One such challenge is in reasoning that I would not be able to make sense of things, to explain our Ailan cultural behaviour and social activities, from a Kole value perspective and scientific reasoning. I will also utilise the approaches of Rigney (1999) and Geia, Hayes and Usher (2013) to show why the Indigenous research methodology and yarning method is suitable for my Ailan migration account. Rigney (1999, pp. 109, 110) suggests that Indigenous research methodology and design is about empowerment, when he argues that ‘Indigenous people now want research and its design to contribute to the self-determination and liberation struggles as defined and controlled by their communities’. Geia et al. (2013, p. 13) also assert:
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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people have read of, and still read about, the many research studies that have been conducted on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people with little or no reciprocity…These past exclusionary research practices have silenced many people and rendered their stories invisible.
Geia et al., comment about past Kole exclusionary research practices also include contemporary Kole research because of a number of factors discussed throughout the topics of my account in the chapters of this thesis. The topic of decolonisation of research is a concern for silencing Indigenous voices by addressing the negative colonialism experiences of Indigenous peoples, for instance the concerns of Indigenous scholars, to mention a few, such as Smith (1999), Battiste (1996, 2004), Nakata (2006), Wilson (2001), Martin (2003) and Rigney (1999) about the perpetuation of colonisation in the contemporary Indigenous experiences. According to Wilson (2001, p. 215) Linda Tuhiwai Smith justified her concern of colonialism as part of the contemporary Indigenous experiences arguing that postcolonisation for Indigenous peoples does not mean the influences of colonisation is not part of contemporary Indigenous experiences since ‘colonialism continues to have a profound impact on indigenous peoples’. Wilson continues to reinforce Geia et al., ‘little or no reciprocity’ stance regarding the silencing of Indigenous voices in research claiming that: Western culture has frequently identified itself as the ethnocentric center of legitimate knowledge. Tuhiwai Smith, however, critiques dominant Western discourses of knowledge and objectivity by demonstrating how Western stories and “regimes of truth” are situated within a particular cultural, social system that needs to be “decolonized”. Western research brings with it a particular set of values and conceptualisations of time, space, subjectivity, gender relations and knowledge. Western research is encoded in imperial and colonial discourses that influence the gaze of the researcher (Wilson, 2001, p. 215).
In relation to my research have our people been silenced in the research process because of the Kole use of scientific research methods and theories that are based on Kole world-views? These have different cultural values, contexts and research intent than those that are part of the Indigenous Ailan world-view. I will elaborate on how Indigenous people have been excluded from participating in the research process in the past and present. In the past we could not express ourselves as Indigenous peoples in research. As Indigenous scholar Michael Anthony Hart (2010, p. 1) contended, Indigenous people:
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were faced with leaving our indigeneity at the door when we entered the academic world, several of us are now actively working to ensure our research is not only respectful, or ‘culturally sensitive’, but is also based in approaches and processes that are parts our cultures.
Using the Indigenous research and yarning research method is also a decolonising process, and the decolonising of research is part of establishing Indigenous self-determination and cultural autonomy (Denzin and Lincoln, 2008, pp. 2, 7; Martin, 2003, p. 14).
Figure 7: Dato Bora and Nene Mareja Bin Juda (née Doolah) 4
3.3 Insider researcher What is important in using the Indigenous yarning method is positioning myself the Indigenous researcher and storyteller in this qualitative research, because my experiences and identity, ‘affect the way the data are collected and analysed’ (Blythe et al., 2013, p. 8). Storyteller may be a more appropriate term for me to use in my yarn than ‘narrator’ because according to Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010, p. 29), Kole people often use the term narrative for storytelling, and ‘Indigenous people prefer to refer to [storytelling as] the process as the telling of our story or stories’. Emphasising the different meanings of terms to the Kole and to
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The photo of Dato Bora and Nene Mareja are the picture in my memory of how I remember them before we migrated to the mainland Australia in 1969.
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Indigenous people is important because of the cultural differences. The concept of yarning and the use of the term narratives is just one example. Other examples where terms have different meanings according to the cultural context will be presented in later chapters. As the storyteller and an Indigenous man, I and my Ailan culture are not separated by the research process. Indigenous scholar Dr. Shawn Wilson (2008, cited in Wulff, 2010, p. 1290) ‘presents the notion of research as an idea and practice reflective of cultural values and beliefs of the researcher’. This allows me to include my personal experiences of the Ailan migration account from an Ailan perspective. I am considered an insider because I share the experiences of my people in the Ailan migration, as well as maintaining a position with the responsibilities of a postgraduate researcher student at the Wollotuka Institute of the University of Newcastle. I reason that my insider position does not affect my research in any way because ‘elements of the insider and outsider are present in all qualitative research’ (Griffith, 1998, and Dowling, 2000, cited in Blythe et al., 2013, p. 9). There are, however, advantages and disadvantages in research of being an insider in regards to data collection. Using secondary data is a strategy that maximises research objectivity that will ensure the findings are accurate and also ensures credibility (Blythe et al., 2013, pp. 8, 9). According to Rooney (2005, cited in Blythe et al., 2013, p. 11), ‘insider research improves credibility, as it enables subtleties to which outsider researchers are not privy to be recognised and interpreted’. Secondary data analysis will also be discussed in the topics of later chapters. The Indigenous research methodology I use does not require field studies or contact with Indigenous participants; instead I use secondary data sources including Ailan studies, research and accounts of the Indigenous experiences. Secondary sources are the best materials to demonstrate and argue the need for Indigenous decolonisation since most of them were written from a Kole perspective based on Kole values. My research is about Ailan pipel; although I am not in physical contact with my research participants, the secondary data I am using contains information about Ailan pipel. I have a relationship with them because they are my people whether I am in direct physical contact with them or I am using secondary information about them. My insider position is also significant in maintaining my Ailan identity, my Ailan ontology, my origins (more information about my Ailan ontology in contained in a later section of this
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chapter. In my yarn, because of my Ailan migrant status and the fact that I and my people living in mainland Australia are on Aboriginal land, therefore my position as the storyteller is of cultural and Kole academic relevance in this qualitative research. The discussion of my insider position in this paragraph is about the connections I maintain, since I am not separated socially from my life outside of my studies. Unlike myself and my Indigenous research methodology and yarning method, Martin (2003, p. 206) questions ‘the central role of critical theory’ using the strength of her Aboriginal heritage as her reason, and argues in her article that there is no need for her to position herself in a reactive stance of resisting or opposing Western research frameworks and ideologies. My Ailan research methodology and yarning method is different to Martin’s Indigenous research method and her positioning because I am using secondary data as part of my source, and I need to incorporate both my Ailan approach and Kole research paradigms in the analysis of my research data sources. 3.4 Messy Texts and Storytelling conventions There is an aspect of yarning that needs to be highlighted which I will now discuss. Yarning does not follow Kole conventions but has its own convention and style. As Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010, p. 39) claim: yarning about a story or an experience does not always follow convention and can meander all over the place. It is what I think Karen Martin, an Indigenous researcher, is talking about when she refers to ‘messy texts’…Like a conversation, yarning has its own convention and style in the telling of a story and can be messy and challenging.
One criticism about conversation as a research tool relates to the ‘messy’ nature of yarning. According to one source, ‘the lack of clarity and uncertainty about how conversation might achieve the purpose of research’ is problematic (Fieldman, 2000, cited in Bessarab and Ng’andu, 2010). However, Indigenous scholar Karin Martin (2008, cited in Bessarab and Ng’andu, 2010, p. 21) argues in relation to the application of Indigenous research methods in her own research that: [It] is my reality and part of my ontology and epistemology that is my Ancestry, my genealogy and identity. To erase the messiness is to deny my identity…The messiness reflects how I have mediated both my own cultural conventions and expectations and those conventions and expectations of the academy.
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I agree with these quotations regarding ‘messy texts’. I argue that Indigenous yarning has a different style because our conversation is about making connections and linking relationships within holistic Indigenous paradigms, while at the same time engaging crossculturally with Kole (Western) research paradigms. Martin (2008, cited in Bessarab and Ng’andu, 2010), contend that as Indigenous researchers we do not ignore who we are and where we come from, that we maintain our identity and our voice in the Kole research process that Martin asserts are ‘those conventions and expectations of the academy’. The yarning in my story might also seem messy, and it is this way because the relationships within my socio-cultural world are complex. In my conversations I make connections, including connections with my audience. As Wulff (2010) maintains: [i]n seeking closer connections with one’s audience, ‘[b]y getting away from abstractions and rules, stories allow us to see others’ life experiences through our own eyes’…The emphasis on relating to one’s audience leads the Indigenous storyteller or Indigenous researcher to build connection, not as a device to convey packaged knowledge—rather, as a value in its own right.
One example (this is also an example where I am going to become a little messy and will seem to wander off-topic) is the social relationship of my extended family where I have more than one grandfather and grandmother, many dads and mums including my own dad and mum. I address some of my dads and mums as uncles and aunties. These are just some of the Kole terms we use to address those in our extended family. I include members of my extended family in my thesis dedication. Operating within our complex pamle (family) system is one of the reasons why the Kole people were confused in the early colonial contact period. The Kole were under the misapprehension that our children were being ignored by their ‘biological parents’ and they took them away from us. This is another example of the messiness in my yarning and why at times in my writing and conversation I might seem unfocused and my direction might seem out of context, but this is due to my holistic referencing and my social act of connecting. I continue with another example of acknowledging my extended family and community through the number of photos I have used in this thesis, all of which are of value and are part of my life and the Ailan migration account. I share a similar social relationship with my overall Ailan pipel and community.
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The other important point that I need to express about regarding the messiness of the text in yarning is the dilemma Kovach (2005, p. 27) discussed regarding written and oral language, Indigenous epistemology and cultural values and how yarning in research ‘loses a level of meaning in the translation into written script’. Kovach (p. 27) goes on the say that ‘[t]he process itself epitomises the European concept of “legitimate” thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken’. Kovach (p. 27) further emphasises the differences between the Indigenous and Kole way of the oral and written form of communication claiming that ‘[w]ritten language adds additional complexity in transmitting Indigenous ways of knowing, given that most Indigenous cultures are oral’. I argue that the dilemma I discussed in this paragraph also contributes to the messy text in yarning. In regards to the messiness of the text I use sub-headings as a strategy to maximise clarity of text in this research. The question presented by Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010, p. 39) is, ‘[h]ow can yarning be more rigorous?’ They explain that social yarning is different from research yarning where strategies need to be in place to guide the research and to make yarning a ‘culturally safe Indigenous method in research’ (p. 39). The strategies that have been employed in this research are explained in detail throughout this thesis to ensure the credibility, reliability and validity of the yarning research method and of the use of the Indigenous research methodology. 3.5 Researcher reflexivity Researcher reflexivity refers to the researcher’s subjectivities while conducting the research, which discourage presumption and encourage the researcher to seek clarification from the sources. ‘The potential for critical reflexivity to minimise the distortion of knowledge and enhance credibility’ is a ‘crucial component’ (Blythe et al., 2013, p. 11) of qualitative study and I therefore need to clarify this in my research methodology. My story and research of the Torres Strait migration is of events that have already taken place. These Torres Strait migration events have been documented by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, a few of which I have listed earlier in this chapter. By citing and referencing (to meet academic referencing standards): 1) I use these secondary sources to corroborate my story; 2) I minimise any distortion; and 3) using this approach also discourages any presumption or bias. I also explain in detail the secondary data collection process, the sources and the analysis, to further address the issue of my insider researcher subjectivities.
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3.6 Storytelling design Poonwassie (2001, p. 67) claim, ‘[s]tory telling is one of the most effective and influential ways of incorporating many cultural values (Charter, 1994; Dion Buffalo, 1990; Tafoya, 1989).’ For this reason and the reasons discussed in Chapter Three and throughout this thesis the Indigenous yarning method is used in this research to bring out the Ailan culture and the cultural reasoning behind the Ailan migration.
In my yarning research design, my stories are a basic form of communication that allows interactions and contact with others. Within the context of the migration account, the ‘personal, social, historical and cultural context’ my stories allow me to construct my identity and make sense of the world and my place in it. Stories are more than just events of life; they are filled with ‘personal meaning’, where I draw meaning from and give meaning to my experiences and my people’s experience. The stories are expressions of those meanings and how they came to be. Therefore, this Indigenous yarning design is ‘an effective strategy for developing meaning…as it provides the opportunity to reflect critically on experiences’ (Blythe et al., 2013, p. 9). The focus of my stories is on meaningful Indigenous experience, which is beneficial to the Ailan migration account because it describes events retold from an Ailan perspective. Blythe et al. (p. 9) respond: Through the articulation of one’s story and the process of putting words to the experience, the unconscious is made explicit, allowing new insights to be gained…elicited for research are particularly valuable, as they demonstrate how life events affect people and how people give meaning to these events.
The Indigenous research methodology and yarning approach is a research design to address my Ailan migration research question. Martin (2003, p. 14) claims: The ability to design research that celebrates a relational ontology requires flexibility and reflexivity that is more than a matter of matching methods of data collection to the research question.
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THE DOOLAH MATERNAL LINEAGE DIAGRAM HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS
Figure 8: The Doolah maternal lineage
3.7 Indigenous ontologies, axiology and epistemology The body of approaches, methods and rules (Porsanger, 2004, p. 107) employed in this research is oriented toward Indigenous culture, therefore it encompass Indigenous ontologies and epistemology, Indigenous axiology (p. 111), including Indigenous ethical research protocols. Ailan cultural concepts, philosophy and world-views (Ailan paradigm) will reverently guide the research ethics. All the concepts and philosophies within the Ailan paradigm are interrelated and intertwined in a complex network of connective social relations, based on the Ailan holistic cultural philosophy. According to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS, 2011), ‘Research on Indigenous issues should incorporate Indigenous perspectives’. The yarning research method allows me to incorporate a strong Ailan perspective to my research, as well as allowing me to satisfy my academic research requirements. The AIATSIS (2011) Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous Studies define the role of the 45
Indigenous researcher and the Indigenous people and society being researched, and clarifies the position of both in Indigenous research. As declared in Principle 10 of the AIATSIS (2011) Guidelines, ‘Indigenous people have the right to full participation appropriate to their skills and experiences in research projects and processes’. 3.8 My Ailan ontology I will include my Ailan ontology in this chapter and will now discuss details of it, to clarify my position as an Indigenous researcher, to work within the AIATSIS Guidelines and to exercise my right (and my collective tradition that of my people) to full participation in research. My Ailan ontology is embedded in the Ailan social reality of the Ailan migration account and it forms the overall foundation of the migration story. It provides depth in recounting our social practice and gives meaning to it. Kole reasoning would isolate the Ailan migration account as a small part of the Ailan colonial experience. However, my Ailan ontology centres the Ailan (the collective and individual) and society in the whole of my research, thus the whole world is viewed out of the Ailan culture and social reality. Aboriginal scholar Karin Martin, a Quandamooka woman from Stradbroke Island in Queensland, has written her own Quandamooka Ontology for an Indigenist research framework. Martin (2003, pp. 5, 6) was inspired by the Indigenist research writings of Lester Irabinna Rigney and Errol West. Her work has in turn inspired me to write my Ailan ontology. First, I will define the meaning of ontology in this context. Strega and Mertens (2005, cited in Kovach, 2010, p. 41), claim that ‘Ontology is a theory or set of beliefs about the world’. Martin (2003, pp. 5, 6) elaborates further by adding that ‘[i]t is through ontology that we develop an awareness and sense of self, of belonging and for coming to know our responsibilities and ways to relate to self and others’. This is referred to as relational ontology. Barbara Thayer-Bacon (2002, cited in Martin, 2003, p. 6), claims ‘[a] relational (e)pistemology, which is supported by a relational ontology, helps us focus our attention on our interrelatedness, and our interdependence with each other and our greater surroundings’. I have emphasised the role of the self in my position in the Ailan community, through my Ailan origin and my Meriam and Erubam heritage. I discuss my kinships and totemic roles, obligations and responsibilities in society in this thesis. I share the knowledge experiences and cultural understanding of the Ailan people. Our strong sharing culture is hard for Kole
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people and outsiders to understand, and we generalise this through our reference of the Ailan kastom, which is a commonly shared social practices of the people of the Torres Strait. What the Europeans called the Torres Strait is the unique solwata (saltwater) region kes (space) in the world between Mugie Daudai (Papua New Guinea) and Kie Daudai (Australia), the ged (place) of our ancestors (McNiven, 2004, pp. 329-345). In my Ailan ontology I locate myself in the Torres Strait ged (country), which consists of gesep (earth or land), gaur (sea), kotor (sky or heaven) and wag kerker (seasonal winds, because of our seafaring traditions) situated at the geographic location of the Torres Strait. I also locate myself within the ged (country) of our island homes, the islands of Mer and Erub the place of my ancestors and their societies, in the eastern part of the Torres Strait where the Great Barrier Reef ends (Sharp, 1993, p. xxii; Carter, 2006, p.288; Mullins, 1994, p. 11). The gelar (law) of my people that governs relationships maintained our people in the Torres Strait in a balanced universe and in an organised society before the European invasion. The collective and connective culture of the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait was forged by creator beings during the Ailan story time. As these beings travelled through the world they linked places to places, people to people and people to places. In the places they travelled yaba teter mek (they left their footprints) through their land and sea routes, from Cape York Australia throughout the Torres Strait (Haddon, 1935, pp. 391, 392; Sharp, 1993, pp. 29, 267) and into the coastal regions of Papua New Guinea. My Torres Strait ontology is not only our social connection to gesep, gaur, kotor, and wag kerker but also our pre-invasion international relationship with our reciprocal trade partners in Mugie Daudai, and Kie Daudai (Shnukal, 1985; Rivers and Wilkin, 1908, pp. 85, 182, 183). In our stories, some of the creator beings are sea creatures transforming themselves into humans after their activities. Some of them became land forms and features. Gelam, who was a boy transformed into a dugong, became part of Mer. According to Sharp (1993), his dugong form became a permanent feature of the Mer landscape: The people at Injinoo, Cowal Creek, Cape York Peninsula, told Rev W. H. MacFarlane that Gelam came from there and went to Moa because there were no wild yams…Aborigines at Lockhart River believe that Gelam came from there. See Au Bala, Book of Islanders, B149; First Lockhart Man connects the myth of I’wai, alligator, with the myth of Gelam.
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Tagai is another. He is the warrior hero with his 12-man crew who became the stars and constellations of the Southern Hemisphere, kotor ge (in the heavens), above the Torres Strait (Sharp, 1993, p. xi). 5 Pre-invasion the Ailan pipel used Tagai to navigate in their seafaring voyages. The signs from Tagai tell the people when it is time to prepare their gardens and hunt turtles. The signs also provide moral codes for the Meriam people, instructing them not to steal from others, and requiring that ‘the Meriam people must share’ (Mabo, 2012). Tagai belongs to all Ailan pipel (Sharp, 1993, p. 3). The Ailan pipel are solwata pipel (saltwater people), with a ‘unique’ seafaring social culture (Sharp, 1993, p. xi). The solwata (I am using the term solwata in the Torres Strait Creole meaning in context to refer to the Torres Strait), the kes (passage) connects all the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait together, linking the five Ailan nation groups of Gudamalugal (Top Western Islands), Maluilgal (Mid-Western or Western Islands), Kaiwalagal (Inner Islands) tradition lands and territory of the Kaurareg Aboriginal people, Kulkalgal (Central Islands) and Meriam le ra ged (place of Eastern Islanders) (Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35). In my Ailan ontology I describe the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait in relationship terms, based on the knowledge and social practice(s) of our people before the Kole (European) invasion. The Ailan pipel are connected to the sea through our dances, art, stories, songs and social behaviour (Fuary, 2009, pp. 32-36; Whap 2001, p. 24). Our people’s living connections to the sea are embedded within the foundations of Ailan knowledge and expressed through our local traditions and shared by all Ailan pipel (p. 24). One example of connections to the sea is the Ailan headdress, the dari. The dari is represented on the Torres Strait Islander flag, which also symbolises the collective yumpla (‘we,’ ‘us’ plural term) of the Ailan pipel: The central and upstanding feather of the dari comes from the frigate bird (waumer), a soaring bird of prey which arrives at the Murray Islands in the season of the southwest winds. On the headdress the feather is topped with a tassel of small white feathers. The straight feather signifies the strength of the sea, a tower of strength…The white tassel at the very top [of the central feather] is the foam formed by currents and winds on wind-torn waves (Sharp, 2002, p. 38).
5
The 12-man crew, six Usiam (the Pleiades) and six Seg (Orion), are called Zugubals, beings who took on human form when they visited Earth. The left hand of Tagai is the Southern Cross.
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My uncle, Meriam elder George Kadde, expresses our connection to the sea through the Ailan dari, dances, stories and songs in this way: ‘when a dancer wearing the dari does the dance he is already a part of the sea’ (Sharp, 2002, p. 38). Ged (land) is just as important and sacred to the Ailan pipel as the sea (Fuary, 2009, pp. 32,33). Each Torres Strait Island nation has their own story of the origins of their people and society. Our giz (roots or origin) is there in the Torres Strait. Therefore, my people’s identity is Torres Strait specific. The Meriam people of the Torres Strait express the ‘place of human origin’ as giz ged. Giz ged is ‘the centre of the world’ (Sharp, 2002, p. 49). This demonstrates the overall connection of the sea, sky and land, and my own place in my Ailan ontology.
Figure 9: Dad and Mum
3.9 Qualitative research This qualitative research aims to provide interpretation and reinterpretation of the ‘social reality’ (Crowe and Sheppard, 2010) of Ailan society and post-invasion cultural practices. By reinterpretation I mean the interpretation of already existing texts describing ‘real life situations’ (Fossey et al., 2002, p. 724) of Ailan pipel. There are limited sources on the subject of Ailan migration and urbanisation, other than this research particularly with emphasis to Ailan culture as a primary focus. Conversely there are rich sources relating to the world’s Indigenous peoples, and these have been used in this thesis to address the research question through comparative cultural studies and analysis. Since the colonisation experiences of Indigenous peoples of the world are similar, the problems Ailan pipel faced are similar to Indigenous people, in the Americas, Northern Europe, Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand (Cunningham and Stanley, 2003, pp. 403, 404).
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The qualitative research methods and data collection employed in the thesis may be used to locate common themes and categories within the collected data (Burnard et al., 2008, p. 430). They are also useful in exploring social behaviours associated with cultural reasons for the Ailan migration and urbanisation and in substantiating why the phenomena are unique and why they should be investigated. According to Bell (1996) people migrate for many reasons. My Ailan account will include some of these reasons, categorised as push and pull factors. However, the primary focus of this study will be in providing a migration account from an Ailan cultural reasoning perspective. There are limited statistical data on Australian internal migration for Ailan pipel, however this is not a matter of concern since the primary focus of the research is not on statistical migration patterns (Quantitative research) but on the social aspects of migration. Secondary sources regarding the social behaviour of Ailan pipel will be used to address the research question or statement. 3.10 Data sources The data of other researchers are re-analysed and re-interpreted in this research study (Watkin, 2009, p. 34) which makes use of secondary data collected from the works of other researchers. This has provided enough research information and accounts of Ailan migration, and therefore, there has been no need for field research and for collecting my own data for this research, apart from my own account and experiences on the migration. The time, cost and resources available do not allow for fieldwork data collection. Therefore, secondary research has been the most appropriate option. Some valuable sources include the works of well-known Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and academics, such as the Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits in 1898 and the works of George H. Pitt, Dr. Felecia Watkin, Dr. Martin Nakata, Dr. Jeremy Beckett, Dr. William S. Arthur, Dr. Nonie Sharp, Dr. Maureen Majella Fuary and Dr. Anna Shnukal, just to name a few.
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THE WIND-CIRCLE OF MERIAM IDENTIES DIAGRAM HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS
Figure 10: The Wind-circle of Meriam identities 6
3.11 Primary, Secondary and Tertiary documentary resources Gopal (1994, pp. 405, 406) argues that ‘information resources are the lifeblood’ of any nation and further claims, ‘recorded knowledge and literature is one of the important information resource’. Gopal describes three documentary resources, primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary sources include Autobiographies, Correspondence, Diaries, Interviews, Personal narratives, Paintings and photographs. While secondary sources include, Biographies, Prior books and papers, Literary criticism and interpretation, History and historical criticism, Essays on morals and ethics, Study and teaching material. Tertiary sources include, Abstracts, Bibliographies, Dictionaries and encyclopaedias, Guidebooks and manuals, Statistics. These three documentary sources have been used and accessed for my research.
The Literature Review Chapter showed that the cultural aspects of Ailan society have been documented in favour of and with emphasis on Kole values, with no significant discussion on aspects of Ailan cultural or social practices. At times I needed to emphasise Ailan social behaviour, and terms in Ailan languages or creole which I argue are more appropriate, because the languages
6
Source: Sharp, 1993, p. 33
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define an Ailan and not a Kole way of knowing and doing. The best way to start researching these terms is to start with tertiary sources and then to use the reference list of these sources to locate original documents. 3.12 Interdisciplinary Social Science sources Aspects of Indigenous culture have been studied since colonisation, and have been captured and documented by various disciplines and organisations involved in the colonial legacy, according to the historic and contemporary interests of academic departments and research organisations. Indigenous cultural information is widely distributed, and sources from disciplines including Sociology, Anthropology, Archaeology, Cultural Studies, Education, Economics, Humanities, Social Welfare, Law, Communications, Geography, Demography, Cognitive Science, Management, Media, Policy Studies, Politics, Behavioural Science and Science have been used in this research study. The Ailan world-view and culture is holistic, about relationships and connections to everything and everyone. Kole people and society (Western academy and scientific reasoning) have fragmented my people and our culture in their research. My Indigenous Ailan research methodology and method will allow me to piece together the fragmented parts reflective of my Ailan social reality. It is a decolonising process and an insider research task because the living social practice and the knowledge of my people is the adhesive that will bind the pieces into a social ‘whole’ (kemer kemer). 3.13 Secondary data collection techniques Secondary published sources that are checked out by experts before being published by reputable institutes and scholars are considered scholarly and credible sources. Secondary sources include existing literature and documents that already contain parts of the research information needed for this research. Since most research material and available information on Indigenous Australians are located in a general combined category of ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ in most collections, there are limited Ailan-specific sources available. Data have been collected for analysis from archives and special collections, journals, peerreviewed journals, science magazine articles, books, dictionary definitions, encyclopaedia entries, introductory textbooks, newspapers, magazines, television programs, videos, photos and internet sources, as per Table 1. Current information relating to Indigenous peoples can be found on internet websites. Most communities have their own websites (Aitken, 2007),
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and these have current unbiased information of Indigenous community situations and Indigenous specific relevance (Nathan, 2000). The United Nations has important information for and from Indigenous peoples, as does the Australian Human Rights Commission Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice website. Up-to-date government policies are posted on government websites. Most books contain outdated information concerning Indigenous people because of publishing delays therefore the internet provides valuable upto-date information. According to Aitken (2007), ‘the Web is increasingly recognised as an important resource in the field of Aboriginal Studies’. 3.14 Endnote X6 data library and citation software The secondary data are collected and stored in the Endnote X6 data library and citation software program. Photocopies of information from library books and printed information (summary notes) of topics used for this research are stored in files using a conventional filing system. The Endnote X6 data library and citation software program has been used ‘as an online search tool, as a reference and full text organiser with a collaborative Web tool and Endnote as a bibliography maker’ (Thomson Reuters, 2014). Almost 2000 references have been assembled for the study. Some of the features of the Endnote X6 software that have been employed include: •
working in an Endnote library
•
setting Endnote preferences
•
entering a reference
•
searching an Endnote library
•
importing reference data into Endnote
•
using Endnote while writing a paper in Microsoft Word.
The limitation of Endnote is that the software package is ‘not designed for the analysis of data’ (Beekhuyzen et al., 2010).
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THE TABLE OF MERIAM TRIBAL DIVISION HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS
Figure 11: Tribal divisions on Mer 7.
3.15 Ethical considerations for reanalysis and reinterpretation of another’s research Ethical considerations for reanalysis and reinterpretation of another’s research might possibly be an issue, but this is more applicable to commercial and scientific research (Neutra et al., 2006, pp. 335–337) than for this Indigenist research framework study. The reanalysis and reinterpretation of another’s research is not considered an ethical issue in the context of this study because the decolonising of the data employs an academic argumentative process and reasoning, maintaining the standards and rigor required for academic research. The reanalysis and reinterpretation of the sources collected for this study will be free of any conflict of interest (p. 337), since it will be beneficial to Indigenous peoples and wider society, and the completed thesis will be available for public access.
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Graham, T. (1981) Retrieved: 3 January 2015 from http://www.mabonativetitle.com/info/doc4.htm
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3.16 Ailan Elders consultation The AIATSIS (2011) Guidelines state that I am required to ‘identify appropriate individuals and communities to consult’. This guideline has been observed by consulting Ailan elders. Working within these guidelines, I have maintained communication with elders of the Ailan community to ensure that all aspects of Ailan culture, topics and religious concepts documented in written form in this research is acceptable and appropriate. Existing Ailan religious ceremonial pictures and photos used in this research are already general public knowledge. The protection of the secret elements of the culture can never be revealed to outsiders or the public. The 1898 anthropological reports of Haddon and his team (Carter, 2006, pp. 287, 288; Herle and Rouse, 1998, p. 3) contain detailed documentation of what I believe to be secret Ailan cultural practices. I have not discussed any aspect of these secret Ailan cultural practices in this thesis, other than what I consider public knowledge, and then not without the consultation and guidance of an Ailan elder. This ensures that only public statements and discussions will be used in this research. In the final revision of the thesis chapters I will also schedule consultation meetings or web conference with Ailan elders who will then inform the community of the content, through the ‘Bush telegraph’, before thesis submission. I have not been able to conduct my research in Queensland because of cost and time constraints, but telephoning elders of the Ailan community is a cost effective alternative. This consultation and communication with elders of the Ailan community is a necessary ethical research practice and part of working within the Indigenous Ethical Research Guidelines and protocols. The bulk of the reinterpretation and reanalysis will work within academic research standards. Whenever and wherever necessary and required Ailan elders will be consulted during the analysis process to ensure the results not only meet academic research analysis requirements but will also meet the Indigenous Ethical Research Guidelines and protocols. The consultation process will not require recording stories from Ailan elders, since recording stories and quotations is not part of the qualitative research design for this research. The consultation process will require advice from elders to which I have respectfully adhered, meeting the Indigenous Ethical Research Guidelines and protocols.
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3.17 Informed consent Graphs, photos and pictures have been used in this thesis with permission, and consent has been obtained. Photos of my family and community have been used and those concerned have been notified through social media and bush telegraph. Copy of copyright permission is in the Appendix 1.
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CHAPTER 4 HOW TO READ THE THESIS
4.1 Introduction In this chapter I explain how to approach the contents of the thesis chapters and provided justification and reasons why I needed to explain. The primary reason is because of my use of the Ailan cultural space and cultural approach, which is a strategy that is part of the decolonization process to bring the reader into the Ailan cultural space. Within this Ailan cultural space it will be difficult at first to read the thesis contents that is until the reader is familiar with the terms and cultural concepts used in the discussion of the topics in the thesis chapters. This postgraduate research is about an important life changing event of the Ailan migration which changed the life of my people through my account and for this reason it is appropriate to use an Ailan cultural approach working within an academic research framework to bring my reader into my decolonized space and I explain how in the topics of this chapter.
4.2 Reading the topics of the migration account I will provide reasons why I chose to research the migration of Torres Strait Islanders and in addition I provide the reader with instructions of how to read the topics I discussed in my Ailan account of the migration. Since I will provide instructions of how to read the cultural aspects of this thesis I need to provide a list of who my readers might or will be. My readers will include people from all over the world who will have access to my thesis. They will compose of academics, students or people from the community who will be interested in the subject of my thesis. To the Indigenous student reader, I have provided examples for you and your research in the account of my research struggle, particularly in regards to maintaining my Indigenous identity and control over my research. My self-determination concern as an Indigenous researcher which I addressed through my research strategies is to write this thesis for my Indigenous Australian readers, by following Indigenous research protocols. I elaborate on my concern in Chapter Three and the research strategies I employed in this thesis where the outcome of my research would be beneficial to the Ailan and Aboriginal peoples of Australia. Part of that strategy was to include Ailan terminologies in the writing and I provide a rational for this through the reasons I will outline in the next paragraphs.
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Figure 12: Big Daddy Elia Doolah’s family Aunty Perina and Big Daddy Elia in the back and in front from left to right their daughters Elizabeth (Colina) Doolah and Nancy Doolah. 8
In the first reason for using Ailan terminologies means I need to provide an explanation for the meaning of Ailan terms and second, I need to inform my readers that the contents of my chapters are social focused not topic focused. Since the topics are social focused and linked throughout the chapters some of the topics in my yarn are repeated because they are being discussed under different social context. I elaborated on the social focused part in the ‘messy text’ in my yarning method in Chapter Three. Since I use Ailan philosophies, the topics I discuss in the thesis chapters include part elaboration on the philosophy I use. For example under the sub-heading of ‘My research journey and philosophical experience’ I elaborate on socio-cultural relationships and connections. Therefore, in structure my topics in part will include philosophical elaborations. Philosophical elaborations and reasoning are a necessary part of my Indigenous yarning research method and as such, one of my research strategies involves using an Ailan cultural approach. The reason for utilizing the Ailan cultural approach is explained in later paragraphs of this chapter. Because of my Ailan cultural
8
Big Daddy Elia Doolah served in the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion in 1945 see Figure 20
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approach my topics are infused with Torres Strait Islander languages, including creole words and phrases.
Torres Strait Islander languages and creole words and phrases are used throughout this thesis and are therefore italicized. The italicized typographical emphasis of the words in this thesis is a device used to distinguish these language and creole words and phrases within the text, to inform the reader that these are Ailan cultural word and phrases and that these are not found in English dictionaries other than in the glossary of terms in this thesis. This italicized typographical device I use in addition to words and phrase distinction is to inform the reader that the use of Torres Strait Islander cultural meanings are being applied in my thesis to enrich the account of the migration providing a fresh perspective on Ailan events and it also includes reinforcing the Ailan identity and communicating that strategically in this thesis. The contents of the thesis chapters are separated into paragraphs to minimize confusion and to help in processing the cultural contents with undue stress.
The instructions I provided above of the structure of my discussion topics engages similar Indigenous research concepts as that used by Indigenous Cree Scholar Shawn Wilson in his research thesis. In the Indigenous methods Wilson used in his Doctor of Philosophy thesis titled ‘Research as Ceremony: Articulating an Indigenous Research Paradigm’, he provided valuable information that is important and applicable to my research cultural approach in regards to: 1) the Indigenous researcher researching Indigenous peoples; 2) the adoption of an Indigenous research perspective and research framework; and 3) the researcher’s own personal experience in research, the structure of the writing, including the writing style. In his thesis Wilson had to explain to his readers how to read his thesis in order for them to be able to understand the contents and style of his writing because of his use of Indigenous knowledge (Wilson 2004, pp. 3, 4).
I find by using the concepts Wilson advocated in the previous paragraph, my readers will develop a relationship such as applicable in an Indigenous yarning paradigm between the storyteller and listener, as Wilson (2004, p. 5) contended:
As the reader will see, ideas are developed through the formation of relationships - that is what an Indigenous epistemology is all about. An idea cannot be taken out of this relational context and still maintain its shape. I will refer again to Terry Tafoya, (1995) who has
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described something he calls Tafoya’s Principle of Uncertainty. Just as Heisenberg theorizes in his Theory of Uncertainty in physics, it is impossible to know both the velocity and the location of an electron at the same time (one would have to stop it to measure its location, or one would lose its location if it maintains its velocity), it is not possible to know exactly both the context and definition of an idea at the same time. The closer you get to defining something, the more it loses its context. Conversely, the more something is put into context, the more it loses a specific definition. So I was faced with the problem of trying to define or describe the ideas that I was presenting, when doing so would take them out of their relational context. In an oral tradition, this problem is overcome by utilizing the direct relationship between storyteller and listener.
I expressed my ideas through Ailan philosophies which needed to be discussed in the context or category of it social relationship in my yarn of the migration. The topics of my chapters are social focused rather than topic focused it’s the result of connecting social relationships to events in the account. Connecting social relationships allows me to maintain the shape of my cultural concept as Wilson argued ‘[a]n idea cannot be taken out of this relational context and still maintain its shape.’ My overall reasoning in relation to preserving the structure of an idea in my topic discussion is in retaining the profile of the interconnecting Ailan social relationships in my yarn. From my concern for maintaining the integrity of the Ailan social culture in the structure of my thesis writing I direct my reader’s attention to the meaning of Ailan social relationships. Social relationships therefore, is the central theme that runs through the topics discussed in the chapters of this thesis in addition, my yarn of the Torres Strait Islander migration is about linking relationships in a social context that Indigenous Cree scholar Shawn Wilson (2004, p. 4) described as a research process in which, ‘[r]esearch by and for Indigenous peoples is a ceremony that brings relationships together.’ By explaining Ailan cultural relationships and social connections in my research I am involved in the ceremony Wilson advocated. If my migration account is presented as a social relationship activity, then it will emphasise Ailan social cultural practice and values to provide a balanced perspective of the Ailan migration account.
4.3 Drawing from other colonised Indigenous experience I argue the use of Indigenous research methodology as part of an anti-colonial stance and resistance which require emancipatory strategies and processes in the research activities. In this instance the collective experiences of the world’s indigenous peoples are valuable
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sources for my research because indigenous peoples not only share a colonised experience but also cultural experiences. These include: 1) indigenous concepts; 2) indigenous base ecological knowledge and philosophies; and 3) because of the effect of colonialism on indigenous cultures. By citing each other’s work we share our indigenous experiences. I demonstrate this in my referencing, in citations such as for example, ‘Martin 2008, cited in Bessarab and Ng’andu, 2010.’ The use of this form of citation especially in Chapter Three brings together the source of indigenous scholars, experiences from the indigenous communities and expertise in indigenous research. Therefore, the use of the citation demonstrates our shared indigenous cultural philosophies and sharing of our Indigenous colonised experiences in research. The need for me to use sources that are cited by others is part of the Indigenous research methodologies and my use of secondary source analysis in the decolonisation process. The secondary source analysis uses the pool of rich indigenous sources and the activity is reflected in the use of the term indigenous. Smith (1999, p. 7) argued that the term ‘indigenous’ is sometimes used to refer to ‘the collective voice of colonised people’ expressing themselves internationally in a strategic way. Smith (1999, p. 7) continues to elaborate claiming that:
It has also been an umbrella enabling communities and peoples to come together, transcending their own colonized contexts and experiences, in order to learn, share, plan, organise and struggle collectively for self-determination on the global and local stages.
I also reason that part of that sharing and learning process involves extrapolating valuable information from the colonial and indigenous experiences of the world’s Indigenous peoples and used to highlight the local struggles of Ailan pipel. Therefore, I draw from the colonised and Indigenous cultural experiences of Australian Aboriginals, Maoris of New Zealand, Native Americans, Aboriginal peoples of Canada, Indigenous peoples of Europe, Africa, India and Asia. Their documented experiences of colonialism provide a rich cultural source which enables me to bring out the Ailan cultural experience and struggle under colonial domination. Indigenous peoples experiences of colonialism including that of Ailan pipel are unique to their local situation but are significant towards adding to the anti-colonial discourse. .
The use of Indigenous research methodology is part of the decolonization process and anti-colonisation stance and resistance to Kole domination which is valuable for my
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research. Sources in reference to culture which is extracted from the literature and secondary sources to emphasise and reinforce my use of Ailan culture in this thesis allows me to apply the decolonization process in the analysis and reinterpretation in the thesis writing, including the articulation of Ailan culture and its place in my research. The philosophical aspects of Ailan culture embedded in the writing changes the context of any reasoning that will favour the Kole to focus primarily on an Indigenous perspective of the migration account. Articulating Ailan culture in thesis writing requires the explanation and the need to define Ailan cultural terms to help the reader through my yarn.
Figure 13: Dato Napoleon Doolah. My Dato (Grandfather) Napoleon, the father of my Dad Gara Doolah.
4.4 Ailan specific terms of references I need to inform the reader of the use of Ailan specific terms and meanings in my yarn and also regarding the spelling of terms used in my thesis. I need to emphasis my reference to Torres Strait Islanders in this thesis because both Ailan and Aboriginal people are from the regions of the Torres Strait and in reference to this I need to clarify
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this. I do not disrespect the Kaurareg Aboriginal people and respectfully acknowledge that they desired to be identified as Aboriginal people and also those of Aboriginal heritage in the Torres Strait including our children who are classified in the Kole system as ‘both’ Ailan and Aboriginal. The Kole classification system is a racial classificatory system which has no cultural meaning. Because of the reasons I outlined in the previous paragraph and in this paragraph when I refer to Torres Strait Islanders or Ailan pipel I also without any disrespectful intention include the Kaurareg Aboriginal people because their traditional territories are located within the Torres Strait.
Therefore with further elaboration in my research the use of the term Ailan and Aboriginal depends on the local Torres Strait region or mainland context, generally I am referring respectively to the Ailan and Kaurareg Aboriginal peoples of the Torres Strait. Besides the Kaurareg Aboriginal people, Torres Strait Islanders also include the descendants of mainland Aboriginal people from Cape York (Shnukal, 1992, p.14). In the mainland context I acknowledge connection and territoriality where reference to the terms of Ailan, Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal is necessary and of cultural significance in the migration account and in defining the mainland Ailan immigrant status, since the Ailan immigrants are living on mainland Aboriginal lands in post-invasion circumstances and have maintained ‘their indigenous identity and cultural heritage’ (Trujano, 2008, p. 14). I begin the explanation of terms with my use of the term Indigenous in this thesis. In reference to the Indigenous peoples of Australia (Torres Strait Islanders and Aboriginal) the term Indigenous will be spelt with a capital ‘I’ otherwise a lower case ‘i’ will be used because of the Australian context in contrast to indigenous reference in other countries, the term Indigenous have been substituted for either Torres Strait Islanders or Aboriginal Australians and therefore the term will be capitalised. For terms relating to Torres Strait Islander references, the reader might find that some words are spelt differently in other sources to the ones I use for example ‘Ailan’ is spelt ‘Ilan’ in other sources. Overall I mean no disrespect and apologize if the names of persons are spelt differently in this thesis to that from other sources or to that of the preferred owners way of spelling. I have provided explanations for the use of different terms and references, different spelling of words and will now provide a rational for my cultural approach research strategy.
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Since I am using a cultural approach therefore, in my explanation of the topics in the chapters of this thesis there is the need to explain the Ailan meaning of terms which have different Kole meanings. The Kole meanings of these terms are based on Eurocentric philosophies, values and world-views and some are inappropriate to use as Ailan terms of reference and in an Ailan cultural context. Therefore, I emphasise the Ailan meaning of the term based on: 1) the meaning of the Ailan language and creole; and 2) the Ailan cultural philosophies, values and world-views. Based on the holistic concepts of Ailan culture and philosophies and our oral tradition Ailan terms sometimes have a generalised reference and have different application in different social context. For example the term Kole can be substituted in context for Eurocentric, Western, the West or Europeans. Another example of generalised reference is how I referred to the Torres Strait as ged in my use of Ailan terminologies since I also refer to ged as either land or sea. My use of Ailan terminologies is justified in my research based on the decolonised approach through my use of the Indigenous research method(ology).
Figure 14: Sammy Daddy’s family Back left to right: Percy Mallie, Joe Mallie, Reuben Mallie, Corina Doolah, Leah Unmeopa, Nat Mallie, Charlie Mallie, Meralda Doolah, Tarita Doolah. Front from left to right: Kara Mallie, Dad, Mum (Maud Doolah- née Solomon), Mary Pitt (née Mallie)
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Figure 15: Vicky and Taiby my small brother and sister From left to right: Top - Morris Cloudy, Nina Cloudy, bottom- Taiby and Vicky Doolah. 9
4.5 Cultural approach Part of that reclaiming strategy of my migration story is to show that the Ailan cultural practice is the first and only social reality of Ailan people and Kole influences are temporary additions that exist outside Ailan culture and social behaviour. To achieve that goal, I adopted an Indigenous cultural approach for my research and expanding on my reclaiming strategy I include the following reasons: 1) the migration research is told from a Torres Strait Islander cultural lens; 2) the cultural approach will produce an outcome that is beneficial to
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Morris and Nina are my children their mother is my eldest sister. They are the great great napas (grandchildren) of Nene Bungar Cedar (née Doolah). This photo was taken in the 1960s at Scruby a railway siding near Hughenden out west Queensland Mount Isa line.
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Torres Strait Islander people and society, and contribute to the overall Indigenous postinvasion struggle discourse; 3) the cultural approach provides me the platform to support my identity and reinforce the cultural practices of Ailan society (where I come from); and 4) through education the opportunity to exercise our rights to self-determination although we are denied it in Australia and in reference to Indigenous Australians its legal definition is vague (Austin-Broos, 2012, p. 19). Overall my Torres Strait Islander cultural approach guides my research. Since the research is a personal account I incorporate the philosophies of Ailan culture and what our ol pipel (old people) or elders teach us as appropriate cultural behaviour. These practicing cultural behaviours establish the principles which guide our social relationships (ethical conduct) with everything and everyone as reinforced by Indigenous Scholar Cora Weber-Pillwax (2004, p. 80) who claims that: [t]hese natural laws or principles of ethics are simply stated: kindness, caring, sharing, and respect. They are meant to govern our relationships with all other living beings and forms of life.
My postgraduate research involves social relationship activities linking my study activities to my Indigenous community activities and social life since the scope of Ailan learning is not confined within the four walls of a classroom.
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CHAPTER 5 THE STORY
5.1 Different social context In this chapter in my yarn I provide background information for all the topics and account discussed in the chapters of this thesis associated with the Ailan migration. All the topics of the other chapters are linked like the spokes of a wheel to the information in this chapter because my account is a social account where strong social links are emphasized. The information in this chapter provides a rational for my research and is an elaboration of the information I provided in Chapter One regarding why I did my research. Where I come from, who I am and my connections in society is a theme that is repeated through topics of my yarn in different social contexts throughout the chapters relating to the Ailan migration experience. Migration is a Kole concept with no traditional cultural reference to the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait, for this reason the concept of migration had been contained in my research in order to restrict the Kole view of the Kole (Eurocentric) concept, to allow me space to emphasise, highlight and discuss the Ailan cultural reasons for the migration and effectively address the focus of this research. To effectively bring out the cultural reasons for the migration I used the decolonized approach and process.
5.2 Yarning approach This thesis is a yarn, a culturally appropriate Indigenous research method of storytelling (Geia et al., 2013). My story is a research migration yarn told by an Ailan Indigenous Australian. I am of Mer (Murray Island) and Erub (Darnley Island) heritage from the eastern islands of the Torres Strait as in my maternal linage diagram of Figure 8, my ancestors Tok is from Warwe village in Mer and Deri is from Erub. Figures 5 and 6 sketch map shows the villages, clan names and boundaries of Meriam society. My story is retold from an Ailan cultural and decolonised perspective. The first part of this migration yarn is about my childhood recollections, during the early part of my life living in the Torres Strait, the place of my birth and it is a pre-and post-invasion 10 account of my people in the Torres Strait. The
10
I use the term ‘invasion’ throughout this thesis in reference to the devastating effect of colonisation on Ailan culture, people and society.
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second part of my story covers my childhood and adult migrant experiences of living in mainland Australia after our migration. My yarn occupies the Ailan cultural space, mindframe and ontology; therefore, reading this thesis might be a little difficult at first, until the reader become familiar with the written form of my yarn, explanations of the Ailan worldview and the references to Ailan languages, terminologies and Ailan creole meanings. 5.3 Ailan knowledge The cultural aspect of this migration story is the use of Ailan knowledge. This knowledge belongs to my people of the Torres Strait region of Australia. Torres Strait Islander Maluilgal woman Georgina Whap (2001, pp. 22–29) expresses her genealogical and geological inheritance, connection and origins of her Ailan knowledge. I share that same Torres Strait knowledge system and connections as part of my origin and our Ailan identity. In my story and throughout this research, I will use my Ailan voice and knowledge with respect by consulting with my elders when expressing our set of beliefs and social practices. In this thesis I argue that the true migration story of my people is an Ailan story that should and will be told and expressed as such. Without my Ailan ontology in the migration story there would be no relationship connections without the application of Ailan knowledge. I reason that without social connections and activities the actors of my story would be like cardboard cutouts in a movie set and the whole story would be meaningless. Through the use and application of Ailan knowledge we become aware of our surroundings and govern our behaviour within the Ailan knowledge system to live in harmony with people and environment. Ailan knowledge provides us with the proper cultural etiquette for our social behaviour, because: Indigenous knowledge is about the interaction of everyday activities that evolve around land, country, sea and sky. Indigenous knowledge is about 'Apasin' (respect) and 'GoodPasin' (sharing our good ways) with people around us. Indigenous knowledge is adaptive, evolving, interconnected and holistic, it's not taught but communicated (Student 12, pers. comm., 2001) (Whap, 2001, p. 23).
The confused state I was in which I discussed in Chapter Seven is the result of the conflict I had in properly processing Kole influence and using both to effectively participate in Australian society. Using both Ailan and Kole knowledge to facilitate my learning in a Kole education system enabled me to progress through my education struggle. Prior to that I rejected Ailan knowledge and substituted it for Kole knowledge, this was how I
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communicated with my surrounding. By doing that I abandoned the way of Ailan knowledge which taught me how to behave, learn and communicate, a way that was beneficial to me that could release my full potential. I tried to become a person I was not, using a knowledge system of a culture that was not of my own. The issue was I tried to work under a knowledge system that did not promote my ways of knowing and doing. It is documented that the postinvasion activities of Ailan pipel at the onslaught of colonisation was to learn about the Kole but never to assimilate into the Kole culture (Sharp, 1993, p. 176). Somehow along the way the influence of the Kole and how this influence whether direct, indirect or subtle undermines Ailan culture and our knowledge system resulting in confusion, which in turn caused us to lose focus. Instead of learning the Kole way and using parts of what we learnt to our advantage we tried to be Kole. Speaking from my own immigrant experience it became easier for me especially as a child to conform to the Kole way rather than being an Islander and continue to do wrong things by not measuring up to the Kole standards. Bebe (Aunty) Ellie Gaffney provided an account of her own immigrant experience when she was doing her nursing training in Brisbane which is similar to my experience. She did not eat at the nurses dining room for the first six months since she arrived in Brisbane because she reasoned she ‘was suffering from culture shock’ (Gaffney, 1989, p. 38). When asked by a nurse friend why she did not eat at the dining room Bebe Ellie told them it was ‘because of the fear that I would do the wrong thing’, ‘and I didn’t want to make the mistake of sitting at the wrong table and being told off.’ Her other reason include, ‘I didn’t know which cutlery to use for what, because usually at home we ate with our fingers, or a spoon’ (Gaffney, 1989, p. 38). In my 1970s school days information on Indigenous people and their way of life was not reinforced in our schooling as it is today, with community involvement, Indigenous cultural programs and Aboriginal studies courses. With the Ailan and Kole knowledge systems I lived in two worlds, in my Ailan world at home and the Kole world at school or whenever I participated in mainstream 11 Australian society. I
11
The use of the term ‘mainstream’ express what Berry (1997, p. 8) reasons as due to societies such as Australia becoming culturally plural due to immigration, cultural groups are usually ‘not equal in power (numerical, economic, or political). These power differences have given rise to popular and social science terms such as ‘mainstream’, ‘minority,’ ‘ethnic group’ etc.’
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explained some of the experiences I had in relation to living two lives the Ailan and Kole. One example of why I reasoned I lived in two worlds regards the words I used in my communication at school. I was using swear words at school and not knowing that I was swearing until a school friend told me ‘Johnny you are swearing’. My parents were not aware of me swearing because they did not live in my Kole world and when I am at home my Kole world and school life did not exist. 5.4 Migrating to the mainland My parents migrated to mainland Australia in the 1960s; they were part of a large group of Ailan pipel who migrated to the mainland in the 1960s and 1970s (Beckett, 2010, pp. 63, 64). Beckett (1987, p. 72) estimated by 1960 ‘no more than 500 Islanders’ had left the Torres Strait and were working in the mainland’. Beckett (2010, p. 69) continues stating that ‘[t]he first Islanders to go south were single or young married men who left their wives behind.’ I also add to Beckett’s statement, leaving children behind as well. In the early 1960s my dad came first to mainland Australia (which is ‘south’ in creole) and later sent for mum and me. I was not able to accompany mum however because of a misunderstanding about child’s plane fares, so I remained with my Nene (Grandmother) Charlotte Buri Doolah (née Reuben) in TI (see Figure 4 of Nene Charlotte). I later joined my parents on the mainland in 1969. I spent almost seven years with Nene Charlotte in TI after my parents migrated. My younger brother Taiby and sister Vicky was born in the mainland, Figure 15 is a photo of them. 5.5 Not a typical story of a child growing up I was not the only napa (grandchild) living with Nene Charlotte in TI; there were six of us napas. From eldest to youngest, there is Elia Maurice Doolah, Azariah Colin Doolah, Petrie Kali Fa’afiu (née David), myself (John Doolah), Margaret Doolah and the youngest Napoleon Arona Doolah. All the other napas of Nene Charlotte may have had similar misunderstandings as I, which prevented all of us from living with our parents in mainland Australia; however, I suspect our arrangement was at the request of Nene Doolah because grandparents raising their napas are part of our Ailan extended family culture (Ban et al. 1993, pp. 16–21). All things considered, I see this story as not a typical one of a child growing up with his or her parents and siblings to adulthood, but rather as being part of the practices of our strong Ailan cultural family and society. I was a child growing up with my relatives; according to my culture, my relatives are my parents, and they are charged with parental duties. As part of
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that childhood memory, I remember trying to make sense as I got older of why my father’s brothers laid the strap on me when I misbehaved. At the same time I will never forget that my mum’s and dad’s fed me and clothed me and treated me as their own child, which I still am according to Ailan culture. 5.6 Rich Ailan family cultural practice I did not only live with Nene Charlotte; I also spent parts of my childhood and young adult life with my uncles and aunties down south in mainland Australia. I do not regret living away from my parents, because growing up with my extended family as well as my parents is part of the rich Ailan family cultural practice (Ban et al. 1993). From this cultural reasoning and experience, both aspects of my life are of equal value to me because of the love and care I received from them all. I would argue therefore that my upbringing has provided a good foundation and background that has allowed me to weave in and highlight Ailan culture in the Ailan migration experience, with the incorporation of Ailan culture to provide a more accurate account, first in the Torres Strait and then the south. Our Ailan cultural practice on the mainland remains strong because we are not disconnected from the Torres Strait Shnukal (2001, pp. 21-35).
Speaking as an immigrant my connection to the Torres Strait allows me to yarn about my origin and the origins of my people which is the base of our Ailan cultural integrity and part of my Ailan ontology. My Torres Strait heritage and link reinforces the unique seafaring identity of Ailan people and enables me to draw from my local Ailan community and allows me to access my Erubam le, Meriam le and Torres Strait Islander heritage reinforcing my migration experience as a strong cultural experience. The geographic location of the Torres Strait holds the links to our complex social relationship practices (Carter, 2006, p. 288). In the following paragraph I will elaborate on one aspect of our complex social relationship practices which I reason forms the basis of our Ailan migrant experience. 5.7 Meriam tribal divisions According to Graham (1981) Koiki Aua (Uncle Edward Kioki Mabo) claimed in the Land Rights Conference of 1981 in Townsville where he was invited to speak stating: I will not be making references to any books, because what I know about my people and our culture did not come from books written by academics. My text books were my parents, especially my late mother and father Maiga and Benny Mabo of Las village, and so many
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other people who contributed to my traditional education, and all my people of the Eastern Torres Strait Islands who unknowingly contributed to the knowledge I now have.
I stress that point Koiki Aua made in application to my research that ‘our culture did not come from books written by academics’ and further add by outsiders. We relate our culture through oral stories which is why I used the story-telling methods for this rearch. My claim to Ailan culture in this research is reinforced in the point Koiki Aua made. In that 1981 Land Rights Conference Koiki Aua explained land ownership in Meriam society using a Table (Figure. 11) showing the structure of Meriam tribal divisions (Pek) which I was not able to display Figure 11 in this thesis because of copyright restrictions. I will nevertheless use the Meriam tribal divisions in my discussion to emphasise the complex social relationship practice of the Ailan culture. Koiki Aua claim:
The island is divided into three major tribal divisions (see table). These are Meriam Pek, Komet Pek and Dauer Pek. These are divided and subdivided right down to clan groups. The laws relating to land were maintained by the Aet of Mer or Dowar. Whenever there was a dispute over boundaries, the Aet was called upon to settle the disputes in each of their respective islands (Mabo cited in Graham, 1981).
Koiki Aua provided a brief outline of that complex Meriam social organisation and a system of social control in Meriam society. The use of the word Meriam (Miriam) to designate the people of Mer was introduced by the Kole anthropologist Haddon in his anthropological reports of the Torres Strait. Haddon (1935, p. 137) first used the term ‘Meriam’ to refer to all the people of Mer, as he maintains: ‘[i]n these Reports we have employed the term Miriam to designate all the Murray Islanders, as it seemed to be a convenient word to use’. The term has been used ever since, but Meriam is actually the name of one of the three divisions of Meriam society.
According to the structure Koiki Aua described I belong to Meriam Pek therefore; kara nosik era nei (my clan name) is Samsep Meriam which is the summary of my clan and the division I belong to in the structure of organisation in Meriam society. My mother Harriet Doolah (née Bourne) is of Komet Pek (Zaub Komet). The organisation of society and my place in it reinforces my sense of origin and belonging, and this sense of origin and belonging is deeply embedded in my culture, cultural reasoning
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and social orientation. Lawrence and Lawrence (2004, p. 29) reinforces my argument about our Ailan sense of belonging stating that:
Islander culture and identity remain strong. Despite the various outside influences that impacted upon Islanders, their languages, dances, songs, stories and spiritual beliefs remain integral to the maintenance of their cultural heritage. Contrary to Haddon’s prediction that change would effectively destroy the underlying fabric of Islander identity, external pressures and internal conflicts have forged the will among Islanders to hold on to important values and customs. Family and kin relationships, and a deep sense of belonging to place, remain at the heart of Torres Strait Islander culture.
The Ailan values and customs Lawrence and Lawrence mentioned in their above quote are those I am emphasising as an integral part of our Ailan immigrant experiences as well as for Ailan pipel living in the Torres Strait homeland. I continue my discussion in this paragraph by elaborating on the concepts behind the meaning of belonging, my place in society (ontology) and the exact same concepts and cultural rights which uncle Koiki (Eddie Koiki Mabo) and my Uncle James Rice and Debug Ata (Grandfather David) Passi fought for in the Mabo Case.
According to my Ailan cultural concepts and philosophy, a person is born into an organised and controlled society. Without an organised society, a person has no ged (place) or origin in this world. The village of Las is giz ged (place of origin) where organisation began for Meriam society (Sharp, 1993, p. 49). Giz in Meriam Mir (Mer language) means the root of a plant, hence giz ged is the root, the beginning, or the place of origin and organisation and hence the centre of the world and Meriam social life (p.49). 5.8 Human life and organisation of society The life and organisation of society includes human life from the moment of conception. Beginning from the mother’s womb onwards, human activities give meaning to an organised society and an individual’s status of belonging and origin. For the Meriam, human origin begins with the unborn, from the first reference ged the place of a mother’s womb and second reference ged as the island home, one’s place of birth. My mother told me, in traditional times, at birth, the afterbirth (korpor) (also term used for navel) (Haddon, 1935, p. 148) of the new-born is buried in one’s country, the place of birth, to reinforce the spiritual and physical
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connection to ged. We say in Torres Strait Creole ‘my korpor e berem dere’ (my umbilical cord or afterbirth is buried there in my country). Ged or country the terms and in the context used here means the place where we come from. 5.9 Torres Strait ged In general, I can refer to the Torres Strait as ged. As the individual moves from place to place after birth within the gelar (laws) of society the impression of ged is already firmly established and the individual will live in freedom (Sharp, 1993, p. 49). This description is the basis of my concept of origin. The word ged pinpoints for me mentally as well as physically a place on earth from which I came, where my life and the life of my people originated from. The concept ged excludes any further need to dispute or argue my origin or the origins of the Ailan pipel, since it refers to my conception and birth place, the Meriam and Erubam communities, and my pre-existing Meriam cultural rights proven in the Native Title Mabo High Court decision (Loos and Mabo, 1996, pp. 141, 142). The topics of this paragraph and the following paragraphs also reinforce arguments about the cultural reasons for the Torres Strait Islander migration discussed in the chapters of this thesis. The Torres Strait ged is that kes (passage) of water between Mugie Daudai (the continent of Papua New Guinea to the north) and Kie Daudai (the continent of Australia to the south) (Toohey, 1994, pp. 7, 9, 10; Sharp, 1993, p. 1). Geographically, the Torres Strait is a unique region; its reference and geographical position was already established by our ancestors in traditional times, in their trade relationships and practices and the continental markers of Mugie Daudai and Kie Daudai. Ailan society was not only organised and controlled locally but the control and organisation of society extended outside of the local community to the wider regions of the Torres Strait and neighbouring regions. Pre-Invasion, Ailan traditional socio-cultural practices allowed for regional stability within the Torres Strait because of strong reciprocal trade relationships and partnerships. In traditional times, Ailan pipel traded not only locally but outside of the region with partnership communities in Mugie and Kie Daudai (Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35; Rivers and Wilkin, 1908, pp. 85, 182, 183); therefore, this documented evidence reinforces the cultural concept of my origin. 5.10 Human migration My focus is local and related to my Indigenous researcher position which I established in the Methodology Chapter Three of this thesis. My reference to the ‘local’ is to draw attention to the focus of the study and the Torres Strait Islander topics of this study including my insider,
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outsider Indigenous researcher position and relationship. Indigenous Opaskwayak Cree scholar Dr. Shawn Wilson reinforces the position of the Indigenous researcher in the research and research involvement reasoning that: the notion of research as an idea and practice reflective of cultural values and beliefs of the researcher. Research is a cultural practice and is afforded value given its accordance with the beliefs and ideas embraced by that local culture (Wilson (2008) cited in Wulff 2010, p 1290).
My concern from an Indigenous perspective is in emphasising the celebration of Indigenous diversity and the local geographical positioning of Indigenous identity which is reinforced in the Torres Strait Islander Meriam meaning and value of ged or ‘country’ (land, sea and sky). The identity of Torres Strait Islanders is reflected in their geographic physical locality which is a shallow reef infested passage of water (kes) approximately 150 kilometres wide situated between the mainland of Papua New Guinea to the north and to the south the continent of Australia (Lawrence and Lawrence 2004, p. 15; Lawrence 1991, p. 2). It was named Torres Strait by Europeans. Torres Strait Islander Meriam Uncle Koiki (Eddie Koiki Mabo) fought for ged in the Mabo High Court. In essence it was an acknowledgement of the indestructible local land sea and sky social connections of the Meriam people and all Torres Strait Islanders. The Mabo High Court recognised this in their deliberation confirming the connectedness of a Torres Strait Islander Meriam social identity written in local ged relationship practices. In the context of the local topic discussed here the High Court Mabo decision recognised that a much older form of unwritten (social) authority existed in Meriam social practices. Sharp (1993) emphasised the basis for this indestructible connection in the meaning of giz (origin). Giz means root of a tree; it also means origin or spring. Ged, which means home or place or homeland, is the undetachable milieu of Meriam identity, for each individual must have a homeland. For an unborn Meriam, ged is the mother's womb; at birth, the individual moves from this ged to that ged, the land belonging to his father. Giz ged is the centre of the world. (Sharp 1993, p. 49).
Sharp’s quote demonstrates and reinforces the concept of locality of origin. In the local cultural context there is no need for the ‘Out of Africa’ theory of human origin. Origin based on the unborn meant that the individual Meriam’s social authority begins before birth from the moment of conception. The emphasis here is on the Ailan aspect, reinforced by my reference to locality of origin. Emphasising the Ailan aspect means, for example, that I
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establish the Torres Strait, the place of origin, as an important cultural factor in the Ailan migration. By emphasising the Torres Strait location, I include and reinforce Ailan cultural continuity after the mainland migration. Thus, my story of the Torres Strait migration in essence is about an Indigenous group moving temporarily away from their homeland, but retaining all their cultural roots and sense of identity in their place of origin (Bell, 1996, p. viii).
5.11 Not a permanent migration The Torres Strait migrations in the 1960s and 1970s were not meant to be permanent because Ailan pipel had their own country and place of origin as emphasised in the preceding paragraphs. Ailan immigrants were not looking for a new country but they were without jobs and they were seeking employment available on the mainland. The Ailan pipel, like other Indigenous peoples of the world, have never given up their countries, but they were deprived of their lands through European colonisation (Amnesty International, 2014). The colonisation of the Torres Strait islands and dispossession of its peoples is the basic reason for the Ailan migration because it destroyed the religious cultural practice (Beckett, 1987, p. 213; Dudgeon et al. 2010, p. 28; Lawrence, 2004, p. 55; McNiven, 2004, p. 82) and replaced the traditional cultural lifestyles and the traditional economy with the Kole religion, lifestyle and economy.
5.12 Practical social cultural experiences My story and yarning therefore, is about my cultural way of learning and about expressing part of our Ailan oral culture. Lekoko (2007) argues that yarning ‘is a potent research tool’ and Drake (2002) cited in Lekoko goes on to add that yarning ‘represents a different way of learning about the world that is no less valuable than that of the classical research inquiries’ (Lekoko, 2007, p. 83). My practical cultural experiences and cultural values come from knowing and learning about my role in Ailan society and actively participating in Ailan social activities, which is part of my Ailan ontology. I have learnt about the culture from my mothers and fathers, from my extended family and from the Torres Strait people of my local community. For example while living in Townsville one of my dad would refer to me as Warwe, which is the name of our village in the territory of my Samsep clan in Mer. It reinforces for me who I am and my place in Meriam, Torres Strait and wider Australian society, which allows me to participate and interact in an appropriate cultural social behaviour. This social practice(s) are examples
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of Ailan cultural continuity post-invasion. Behaving in a culturally appropriate way is important in cultural communication because we are an oral culture and non-verbal communication through one’s action is part of the communication process. Correct social behaviour in Ailan society is referred to as good pasin (fashion) or debe tonar, good custom (Scott and Mulrennan, 1999, p. 160). The opposite is bad pasin or adud tonar (bad manners). The social world of the Ailan pipel is about behaving appropriately and the emphasis is on non-verbal activities. Therefore, social relations are an important cultural practice. From my Ailan socio-cultural viewpoint as the storyteller, my story and overall research is about a personal journey of social interactions. Since the storyteller is a person there is a storyteller and listener relationship between the storyteller and the reader of this thesis regardless of the cultural background of the reader. Sturm (1999, p. 2) describes an important aspect of the storyteller and listerner relationship claiming that ‘people who listen to stories can undergo a profound change in their experience of reality.’ Therefore through the change mentioned here the reader shares the journey with the storyteller. In this sense the reader shares a world that is not abstract, and therefore the journey has meaning and purpose. This journey is about relationships and this research is a social experience because it is about an important aspect and period in my life, and therefore, it is a part of my cultural and academic life journey that I share with the reader. This holistic view has the same cultural reasoning as our Ailan way of learning, which is not confined within the confines of the Western academy. Therefore, my research journey has a significant cultural meaning because it is part of my life’s journey. I use concepts and philosophies of the culture of my people to enhance the meaning of the journey and to give substance to it as a social and cultural activity in my life. My research activities are broken down into points of social contact, from the activities of choosing the thesis title, the data collection and analysis, the writing of the thesis and the overall experience of this academic activity. I also see the migration story of the Ailan pipel as a journey, one with a beginning, with significant events that form the middle and an end. The end is not the end of the journey but the end of my yarn, which I emphasised in the conclusion Chapter Ten of this thesis. The socio-cultural relationship aspect of the journey includes sharing and therefore the cultural concept of sharing needs to be highlighted. I will elaborate further on my journey in the next Chapter Six. The reason for devoting a whole chapter on my journey is because in my culture the journey involves a learning experience
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through our social activities, our obligations and responsibilities, which highlights our strong Ailan culture behind our social practices in the Ailan migration account. I provide an example of our Ailan socio-cultural practices in the next paragraph.
Figure 16: Uncle Rete Doolah’s place. 12 From left to right, myself, Grandmother Charlotte Buri Doolah, Napoleon Doolah, aunty Ruth Doolah (née Mills) Uncle Rete’s wife, holding their daughter Emily Doolah.
5.13 Cultural roles and family responsibilities This research journey has allowed me to recall the events of my childhood. The journey gives meaning to these events as part of the Ailan mainland migration account. My adult and childhood accounts have also helped me to understand my cultural roles and my family responsibilities in Ailan society and in wider Australian society. In these roles I am a brother, a abung (big brother) a tawi (brother-in-law) (Holm, 1988), a dad, a Big Daddy, a Dato
12
Photo taken at Uncle Rete Doolah’s home in TI in the early 1960s.
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(granddad) and in the Torres Strait Islander tradition I am an uncle to any Torres Strait or Aboriginal child who displays respect to me by calling me ‘uncle’. Aspects of my childhood experiences have taught me how to function as an adult. I took on the responsibilities of these roles as I participated in society. The Ailan culture taught me how to respect adults, and my family cultural responsibilities and obligations have given me the privilege of teaching my children. This not only includes the children of my brothers and sisters but any Ailan child, this is the Ailan way, Ailan kastom (Island custom) or pasin (fashion) (Scott and Mulrennan, 1999, p. 160). We make statements about respecting our ol pipel (elders) and practice this respect in our communities, showing respect for the elders of our local communities including our family members. I grew up with my Nene (Grandmother) Charlotte Buri Doolah and that was where I formed my strong cultural concept of respect.
5.14 Nene’s story before Christianity I remember one event of my childhood when Nene Charlotte Doolah had cramps and during the night she would ask us, her grandchildren, to massage the cramps in parts of her body. Once, I massaged Nene Doolah from night to daybreak. During times such as these she would tell me stories of the old times after colonisation, of the times before Christianity became established throughout the Torres Strait. She once told me a story of how the old people would refer to the date of their birth by referencing the season in which they were born; they would begin by saying something like ‘I was born when the leaves fell off the trees’. This story like many others influenced me greatly as a child. During my childhood, I never stayed out after dark or played too far away from home around dusk. It taught me to maintain an open mind about life, and to respect other cultures as well as my own. Therefore, the importance of storytelling provided me with a practical and personal sense of my whole social world and the world I interacted in from my Indigenous cultural perspective and lens. This is the primary reason I value my Indigenous storytelling way of learning, which has also helped me to learn at university in the Kole Western learning institutions, through the process of decolonisation. Thus, I have learnt not to abandon my Ailan culture but use it in ways that are beneficial to my academic study, through the storytelling approach to my research. Storytelling or yarning is about the Indigenous way of knowing (Lekoko, 2007, p. 83). I am able to incorporate my cultural values in the migration yarn which is an important part of the Ailan social world and cultural practice. The yarning approach allows me to present a strong
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social Ailan migration account that otherwise could not be provided using mainstream research theories that Lekoko (2007, p. 83) claimed, ‘do not respect Indigenous identity, culture, experiences and ways of knowing’. In regards to the research focus the purpose of the yarn is to provide a fresh account of the Ailan migration experience from a socio-cultural perspective, through my living kinship pamle (family) account. This demonstrates cultural integrity and justification for cultural continuity in our mainland experience and shows how our complex Ailan social practices are held together by our social identities and practicing social realities. I have described how the Torres Strait geographic location is our permanent place of identity and homeland. These principles will provide a foundation enabling the following chapters to bring out the important cultural reasons behind the Ailan migration from the Torres Strait to mainland Australia which I emphasise as a journey of learning. This next Chapter Six discusses our migration journey and our first Ailan migration experience to bring the focus of the research in line with documented Ailan events and my migration yarning.
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CHAPTER 6 THE JOURNEY
6.1 Introduction In this Chapter Six I describe my research journey within the Ailan migration account using my Ailan cultural concepts, philosophies and reasoning. The discussion of my journey in this Chapter Six is from two general perspectives the first relates to my Ailan identity and the second is an emphasis on my Ailan culture. Thus I reason that my journey is also a philosophical journey because I use a philosophical cultural approach and a perspective which has meaning to me and my people. I use an Ailan cultural standpoint as a reason for occupying an Ailan cultural space which I emphasise as the space my ancestors occupied preinvasion. In this space I can justify limiting and restricting the Kole influence in my discussion and research approach which I reason is one of the strategies in my research that allows me to bring out Ailan socio-cultural factors that is important to the Ailan migration account, experience and research focus. I also reason that by discussing the space of my ancestors I emphasise my use of the decolonisation approach from my Ailan cultural perspective that I am using in this study. My journey is the journey of an Ailan man and my discussion in this Chapter Six continues from the socio-cultural discussions of the previous Chapter Five as I use events of my childhood and migrant experiences of my memories incorporating Ailan cultural concepts and philosophies to enhance and culturally enrich factors of the Ailan migration in my journey. The social aspect of my journey involves sharing because the Ailan culture is a sharing culture (Sharp, 1993, p. 116).
6.2 A sharing society Therefore I reason that the kind of world that my Indigenous ancestors of the Torres Strait lived in was a caring society, one that outsiders would not understand. To try to understand the social sharing of Ailan society we need to understand the sense of cultural behaviours which might otherwise be regarded as unorthodox. This strong sense of caring and sharing is discussed in the environmental care practices in the previous topic discussion and was demonstrated in history when my people provided support those who exploited them in the pearling industry (Loos and Mabo, 1996, p. 131), or when they volunteered for Army service in World War II (Sharp, 1993, pp. 220, 221) in defence of a Kole nation who dispossessed
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their homes, destroyed their way of life, dehumanise them, killed their men women and children and treated them as non-citizens. The caring and sharing Ailan culture is reflected in the culture of adoption. The adopted child inherits all the adopted parents’ inheritance as if he/she was a biological child (Ban et al., 1993). Uncle Koiki (Eddie Mabo) was an adopted child (Loos and Mabo, 1996, p. xvii) and won a High Court challenge that could not discredit his adopted status and inheritance.
Figure 17: Big Daddy Elia Doolah and Pastor Don Brady. 13 Back row first on the right is Big Daddy Elia Doolah and bottom row first left is Aboriginal activist Uncle Don Brady.
6.3 Cultural adoption To some extent the High Court of Australia recognised the humanity in the Ailan culture of adoption and that any baby or child has the right as a human being to full inheritance of his or her parents or adopted parent’s property title and name (Ban et al., 1993, pp. 16–21). In this
13
Photo was taken in the 1960s at the church service at Springhill Brisbane.
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sense the concept of ‘adoption’ has no meaning in Ailan culture because it is a Kole concept. When an adopted child is raised by the adopted parents he or she is raised as if a biological child of the adopted parents and given the same love and affection not only by the family and extended but by the whole community. In the following paragraphs I will use examples of the cultural behaviour and highlighting and removing Kole concepts to show the kind of mindframe, space and place that my ancestors have lived and operated in pre-invasion. 6.4 My research journey as an Ailan man The cultural concepts and philosophies I am about to explain and discuss are found within the Ailan socio-cultural concept of sharing, connections and our whole world of social relationships. Wilson (2008, cited in Wulff, 2010, p. 1290) viewed research as: an idea and practice reflective of cultural values and beliefs of the researcher. Research is a cultural practice and is afforded value given its accordance with the beliefs and ideas embraced by that local culture. I therefore, use concepts and philosophies of my Ailan culture within my research to highlight my relationships and the connections I have made and will make. I use my totems because our Ailan culture is about relationships. From my experiences and that of my people in my migration story, relationships are formed and maintained so therefore the journey is important to me and of cultural significance. For this reason I have included the journey as an important topic in my story. Since Kovach (2005, p. 27) claims, ‘[v]alues that honour relationships are important for cultures that value the journey as much as the destination.’ I use the concepts of Indigenous scholar Shawn Wilson (2004) to stress what is important and socially accepted in our Indigenous culture. The relationship I will establish with the reader of my story regardless of the readers culture and background, will allow us to travel this journey together, you and I and my people. I emphasise my relationship with Ailan pipel and society since it is my social reality. For this reason I have declared my relationship and connection to my pamle and Ailan pipel and why I have included my people in my thesis dedication statement. The inclusion of my people and their mention in my thesis dedication statement is not a strategic move but is a reflection of my Ailan socio-cultural practices and social reality. It is how I communicate my identity and reinforce my sense of belonging. By emphasising my relationship and connection with my people, I acknowledge my Torres Strait Islander identity along with my local Erubam le and Meriam le identity and my
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Australian identity. Uncle Koiki (Eddie Koiki Mabo) reasoned his connection in a similar way stating ‘I am a Piadram first and secondly I am a Murray Islander and then a Torres Strait Islander and then an Australian afterwards’ (Loos and Mabo, 1996, p. 56). In Chapter One I discussed my Meriam identities and would like to add to that discussion by elaborating on Uncle Koiki’s reference of his Australian identity. I also have an Australian identity because our Ailan sense of belonging is not restricted by Kole concepts of racial difference but in justifying our overall social activities, responsibilities and obligations. The topic of identity in this paragraph is part of the identity discussion throughout this chapter and the chapters of this thesis and according to my reasoning it’s about connections in social relations and our responsibilities within these relations which reinforce our collective values and our place in society. I describe my journey in a culturally appropriate and philosophical way, using two of my identities I mentioned in this paragraph in regards to my identity as a Torres Strait Islander Meriam Man. 6.5 My Y journey First I explain my research journey as a Torres Strait Islander and then as a Meriam person using the sap (driftwood) totem of my people. I use the concept of the ‘Y’ (Meriam mir), (a coconut seed, a reproductive unit of the flowering coconut plant), to explain my research journey in reference to our Ailan seafaring identity, our connection to our Torres Strait ged (land or country) and our celebration of diversity within the Torres Strait. The celebration of Torres Strait diversity includes all the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait, all the language and cultural groups represented in the regions of the Torres Strait and in the white five-pointed star in the center of the Torres Strait Islander flag. Drawing on my Ailan cultural reasoning I establish my Torres Strait Islander seafaring identity through my ‘Y’ (coconut seed) journey which began from a coconut tree in the Torres Strait ged. The coconut seed is a young coconut plant attached to the ‘U’ (coconut) (Haddon, 1935, pp. 139, 169, 171), which is carried by ocean currents (our seafaring identity) and washed ashore. In favourable conditions it will set roots and establish itself. The voyage of the ‘Y’ however is left to the elements and unplanned as it is carried to many places by the ocean currents before it finally set roots. Nature and favourable conditions determine its destination the end of its journey and its new beginning.
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The migration story for the Ailan pipel was also largely an unplanned journey, as is the story of all immigrants entering a new country to face a culture different to their own, different political, economic and social way of life. Emphasising the unplanned Beckett (1987) commented that Ailan immigrants who had disembarked at mainland Australia were going to work on the railway, but they had never seen a railway line or ridden on a train. Urbanised life in the South was totally different from the life the Ailan pipel were accustomed to on the Islands and the island missions even with all its restrictions. The experiences of racism for example were experienced differently in mainland Australia for the Ailan family as well as the single Ailan migrant. Koiki Aua (Eddie Koiki Mabo) told a story of how he and his family had to spend the night bedding down on the railway station seats because they were denied hotel accommodation. My South childhood experiences that I will discuss include experiences of racism, particularly my school experiences. Sharing the struggle of the Aboriginal people in mainland Australia is part of that unplanned Ailan migration journey. The end of this research migration journey will be reached in the concluding chapter of this thesis. It will not be about assimilation, but about how I maintained my strong cultural identity. I will relate a milestone in my life which enabled me to discover then redefine who I am as an Ailan person that allowed me to contribute, to empower the broader Australian society, but first I had to became comfortable with myself as an Indigenous man. My overall experience was an experience of change which I reason through my cultural understanding of the meaning of life, my life and my people’s within the parameters of this Ailan migration research and its effect in my overall community life. My account is not about me complaining about my struggles in the society I live in. Rather my account is about an important first step before I was able to help myself. This first step is to ‘identify’ the problem (Gobbo, 2008, p. 242), and beginning from there the whole process is about changes and dealing with these changes. For example, in my research decolonising events and my experiences is about gaining new knowledge. For me it is a life changing, cognitive and practical social process. I reason, the experience is similar to the concept of the life changing process of the metamorphosis of the butterfly or moth. It is a metamorphosis from egg, caterpillar, to chrysalis and then to the adult butterfly or moth. I use the metaphor of the butterfly as a cultural expression of the concepts of my Korsamer lubabat the butterfly or moth. Korsamer is the lubabat (totem) of my people, the Warwe people (see Figure 3, which shows in the top left-hand corner our place Mer, our village Warwe, and our tribal
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name and lubabat). 14 In my journey and metamorphosis I move through various learning stages, from one stage of learning to the next with each life changing experience, ‘moving from place to place’ (using the appropriate Ailan cultural philosophical reference). From the moment I established my identity, I was able to navigate myself through life and through my self-determining education experiences. In Chapter Ten the conclusion is not ‘the’ end but ‘an’ end and a beginning in my Ailan cyclical cultural timeframe. The journey of the ‘Y’ is an account of social activities and related experiences of the migration. 6.6 Sap lubabat journey Besides the ‘Y’ (coconut seed) concept and philosophy I discussed in the previous paragraphs I also used the sap (driftwood) lubabat (totem) of my people to explain my research journey. I have more than one lubabat and the sap is one of the totems of my people, the Sager people of Mer. Figure 5 sketch map shows the seven clans and clan boundaries and villages of Mer. The eighth clan Dauareb is located on one of the smaller Dauar Island of the Mer group and the clan boundaries of Dauar in shown in Figure 6. The sketch maps show the boundaries but within these boundaries the social relationships and activities of the people and community is what gives meaning to the structure of social organisation represented by the drawings of Haddon’s sketch maps. The cultural activities continued even under the strict control of the missionaries. Some of the activities were recorded and others were kept from outsiders (Sharp, 1993, p. 44). Through my sap journey I provide examples of the social activities of the community which is part of the Ailan way of life. I emphasise three points of significance related to the topics I discussed in the above two paragraphs. The first is to reinforce my research focus, which is to establish that the reasons for Ailan migration and mainland urban social activities are culturally complex and therefore need to be included in the Ailan migration study because without such elaboration the migration story would be just another Indigenous migration account, without any Indigenous cultural emphasis or significance to make it a unique Ailan migration experience. The second is to highlight practical Ailan cultural activities to demonstrate and reinforce social connections in my journey, since my sap lubabat journey is
14
My parents showed me a Korsamer one time when it had somehow entered our home and was resting on the wall. The moth was yellow in colour and had feathery antennae which was the striking feature I remembered about it. I withhold the reason mum gave me for the appearance of the Korsamer in our home but I can only say it had something to do with our pamle.
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a story of continuous connections with no permanent destination, drifting with the tide from place to place. For example people in Meriam society are not only identified by their clan names and territory but also by the position of the winds blowing on their land, for instance, naiger (true northeast) and sab (north), koki (northwest), ziai, the southwest wind, bakei (west wind) and irewed ziai (west-southwest wind) (Sharp, 1993, p. 55). These winds, which Uncle Koiki Mabo referred to as ‘trade winds’ (Sagigi, 2012), blow in different seasons (wag/kerker) around the island (Sharp, 1993, pp. 54, 55). Uncle Koiki and Uncle Pesarek Wailu of the Piadram clan built barriers to shelter themselves from the southeast sager wind which is an ancient practice. Figure 10 is a circle diagram showing the wind identities of the Meriam people (Sharp, 1993). The diagram of the wind identities shows the complex social relationships of Meriam society and the bond the people have and maintained with their geographic environment. 6.7 Sager people wind identity These winds and other natural elements link the clans to each other (Scott and Mulrennan, 1999, p. 150). In my situation, the sub-clans Piadram and Samsep (my clan) of the nosik (clan) Samsep are linked. The Samsep people, my people, are southeast people, or sager people but we ‘belong to mared, the eastern division of sager, the southeast wind’, whereas other Meriam people belong to gared, the southern division of sager (Sharp, 1993, pp. 54– 56). The lubabat all the southeast people share and include in their totems are the deumer (Torres Strait pigeon), the beizam (tiger shark) and sap (driftwood) (Sharp, 1993, p. 57). As in the discussion, the sap is carried by the ocean currents like the coconut seed and is washed ashore as debris. My story and research journey is the journey of the sap. This is my totem. I have a special relationship with the sap and share its unplanned journey. The sap provides a place for sea birds to rest in the open ocean. Marine organisms like barnacles can attach itself to the sap. The places where the sap has come in contact with different shores as it is carried by the currents are the points of contact in my journey. My story, like the sap, begins in the Torres Strait and explains my research journey that has become an important learning experience. From my Ailan cultural perspective the philosophy behind our learning is about making social connections and maintaining these connections. For this reason I advocated that my tertiary education and research journey is part of my journey of life and the learning
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journey is part of my nature which incorporates the concepts of our Ailan Y journey and my sap lubabat.
Figure 18: Uncle Rete and family. Above photo in Townsville in the mid-1970s, left to right: Aunty Ruth Doolah (née Mills) wife of Uncle Rete, next is Aunty Colina Sailor (née Doolah) and Rete Aua (Uncle Rete). The two children is Agnes Doolah daughter of Uncle Geoffrey Doolah and Aunty Lettia and next to her is Rita Sailor daughter of Aunty Colina and Uncle Fredrick Sailor.
6.8 My research journey and philosophical experience. I continue to elaborate on the topic of my journey using the concept of my philosophical standpoint in this chapter to reinforce and authenticate the local Ailan culture and the customary ways of the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait in my research. I have already explained the meaning of culture from the Torres Strait Islander locale throughout the chapters of this thesis in different social context. The Kole meaning of the term culture has been used to describe the way of life of my people but the term culture has a very broad meaning in research. Some have advised against using the term culture in research. I argue
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that my local use of the term culture for Ailan pipel is justified because in my research my reference to Ailan culture describes social activities of a pre-invasion organised way of social living and shared relationships which existed thousands of years before European invasion of the Torres Strait. The Ailan culture which our ancestors practiced continues in post-invasion Ailan society in a climate which constantly challenges the Ailan way of life by reinforcing Kole values. I reason that the place of my ancestors which is my philosophical standpoint is where I cannot be challenged, regarding my reference to Ailan culture. My philosophical standpoint is based on the Ailan experience, social culture and knowledge. The Ailan social experience is based on there bring a reason for everything, reason for every action and every behaviour 15 because of our social connections and how we maintain these social connections through our obligations, responsibilities and our position in our local Indigenous society. The Ailan culture is an oral culture although there is recognition for our Ailan oral tradition it is not emphasised in its social application and context as demonstrated in Sharp’s account of the 1936 Torres Strait Islander Maritime Strike. When Mr McLean visited the Islands between 7 and 23 January 1936 to recruit the crews of the 'Company boats' he was surprised to find that a general strike had been organised. At each Island the procedure adopted by the striking Islanders had been much the same: the assembled men stated their refusal to work the 'Company boats' and when he asked the reasons they left the room without answering. They were on separate islands but they were acting in unison. (Sharp 1993, pp. 190, 191)
When asked for the reasons for the refusal to work, although the Ailan men communicated their answer through non-verbal communication by leaving the room, the Kole verbal communication requirement contradicts this as ‘they left the room without answering’(p. 191) which seems to infer that the men left the meeting without anything to say. From an Ailan oral communication tradition this may not be the case because the men communicated two things. First the Ailan men communicated their refusal to work and second they did not want to discuss the reasons why at that particular recruitment meeting. In regards to Sharp’s
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Since we have an oral Ailan culture, non-verbal behaviour is critical in communication. For your communication to be genuine your actions need to reflect what you say and visa versa
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incident I discussed about recognising non-verbal communication listening is also part of oral communication and part of the learning process. Part of the communication in Ailan society through the oral culture is to listen to what is said and the other part is to work out the non-verbal language (as I have discussed above through the examples of Sharp’s account) to try and understand your complete message through some form of reasoning. In non-verbal communication formulating reasons are necessary for communication between the sender and the receiver. The receiver deciphers the message formulating reasons to complete the communication. Most of the main reasons about culture and life are explained to us by our ol pipel (elders) and are part of the pre and post-invasion Ailan cultural practice. I provided a post-invasion example of a reason explained in relation to mainland migration in Chapter Eight of my Grandfather Marou Ata (Marou Mimi). His reason was about explaining possible outcomes of the mainland migration resulting from participating in mainland mainstream society away from the restricted influence in the Torres Strait. The knowledge we obtain from our elders engages our listening and informs our cultural way of learning. As far as knowledge is concerned certain knowledge is passed on to us by our elders when they deem it to be the appropriate time. I have experienced how knowledge is passed on in Ailan society from our elders, Ailan pipel and my pamle. Our elders are always allowed space to speak to us and we listen in respect. Therefore, I reason because we have an oral culture which involves listening with respect, I emphasise that the Ailan culture is a listening culture. Listening is an important part of oral communication and reasoning. There is the historical incident where some Ailan men at a meeting exited through windows. I reason it was a demonstration of the Ailan oral culture demonstrating that they did not want to listen anymore, that the time for listening was over (Loos and Mabo, 1996, pp. 30, 31; Sharp, 1993, p. 189). The Ailan culture is still strong today and continues to influence my learning and social activities. 6.8 Beginning of the migration story My migration story begins in the Torres Strait, at the place of my birth. The journey of the sap begins for me on Mer from birth to the age of three, when I moved from Mer to Erub as the sap carried by the ocean current washes on the shores of the Islands. My journey continues at the age of four, moving to TI and then at age ten, moving from TI to mainland Australia: the sap leaves the Torres Strait and is carried by the ocean currents to Kie Daudai.
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I was born in TI Hospital in the late 1950s. My late mother Harriet Doolah (née Bourne) is of the Komet clan of Mer and my late father Gara Doolah, of Erub and Mer heritage, is of the Samsep clan of Mer from the village of Warwe. Figure 9 is a photo of my dad and mum. In Figure 5 Haddon’s sketch map of Mer, Warwe Village is located in the top right section in the Samsep clan boundary between Areb and Turpit. After my Dato (Grandfather) Napoleon Doolah, the eldest of the Doolah clan, (as of Figure 8), and his wife Atima Doolah (née Dawita), passed away, my dad who is the eldest and his five siblings, moved from Mer to live with their Uncle Dato Charlie Doolah at Erub at Dato Charlie’s request. As in the Doolah lineage diagram of Figure 8, the children of Dato Charlie Doolah include Big Daddy Elia, Aunty Auke David (née Doolah) Uncle Kakowai, Aunty Colina Sailor (née Doolah), Uncles Geoffrey, Rete and Taiby. While living in Erub with Dato Charlie my dad returned to Mer for his wedding and marriage to my mother. My Grandmother Nene Charlotte Buri Doolah told me part of the story of how my parents were married. In the early missionary days under the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, Islanders needed permission from mission managers to marry. My parents and their generation were restricted by the restrictions of Christianity in combination with the Ailan cultural practices (Sharp, 1993, pp. 8, 9, 277). It was considered immoral for a child to be born outside of wedlock. Uncle Koiki (Eddie Koiki Mabo) explained in detail two incidences which demonstrate how outsider’s law was being implemented and the laws imposed on Ailan community regarding marriage: The Act was very strict at that time and I remember people going to Court; couples going to Court because a girl was pregnant; being made to marry by the Councillors within a certain time. They thought it was disgraceful for any woman to be a single mother. They told the Islanders that they did not want any second-class citizens to be born out of wedlock; so anybody who fell pregnant, or any boy who was responsible for making a woman pregnant, was put into jail and then appeared in Court and was made to marry that girl, whether they loved each other or not. I remember one morning, early one morning, my mum called me in and covered my head with a cloth, and oh, not with a cloth, but covered my face with her dress because there was a couple being brought to the jail (we used to live not far from the jail) because they spent a night together. When they were picked up, they were in a very uncivilised situation, naked. They were brought into jail naked, the way
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they found them in bed. The relatives later brought their clothing to them. It was very bad. (Loos and Mabo, 1996, p. 32) Uncle Koiki’s account demonstrates how my parent’s generation lived under very strict conditions in the period where Ailan pipel were subject to Kole laws which dehumanise them. In pre-invasion times being naked was not an issue. The use of the term ‘uncivilised’ by Uncle Koiki reflects the influences of Christianity and Kole society on Ailan pipel. Ailan pipel were prevented from practicing their own culture and from dealing with issues in society in their own cultural way, the way they practiced pre-invasion.
My father was in the situation I described above and the rules applied to him, but my father was just one account. Most of his generation was also affected by the changes in Ailan struggle for freedom and social justice. Another example of the strict colonial and Christian influenced rule affecting my dad’s generation is when ‘[h]e [Uncle Koiki] was banished from Mer for twelve months at the age of fifteen and actually stayed away for nearly two years’ (Loos and Mabo, 1996, p. 4).
This short account demonstrates the need for me to make sense of things affecting Ailan pipel especially when considering the disadvantaged, restricted colonised Ailan society. I am certain that the Ailan pipel of my parents’ generation have similar stories. I used my parents’ case to demonstrate the conditions under which the Ailan pipel were living, and to reveal aspects of the overall colonial rule in their lives and social activities. Accounts such as this one provide a glimpse of the background for Ailan migration to mainland Australia. The account I am about to give was a story told to me by my Nene Charlotte Doolah. 6.9 Memories of important events Nene Charlotte Doolah told me the story that dad was on a boat from Erub on the way to his wedding in Mer. I was a new-born baby when mum and dad married at Mer. Nene Doolah said dad was crying on the boat trip over; apparently he did not want to get married but had no choice because of the rule. The Ailan pipel traditionally had a relaxed attitude toward marriage and the rules and laws of Christianity, since there were no marriage rites in traditional Ailan society. After the marriage dad left mum and I at Mer and returned to Erub. About two or three years later at about the age of two to three Dato Charlie instructed dad to bring mum and I over from Mer to live with them at Erub. I have memories of my childhood
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days on Mer particularly of the big ome tree (Haddon, 1935, p. 162) at the back of mum’s place in Zaub village. There was a bench under the shade of the tree. My late au sissy (eldest sister) Maigi would tease me and make me cry and this was her way of showing her affection. I have memories of accompanying my Grandfather China to the garden at Mer and I would watch him fashion a rollie cigarette out of a stick of Daru tobacco and golab (dry banana leaf). The activities of these Ailan cultural obligations such as Ailan style weddings, annual July One Coming of the Light celebrations 16 and Tombstone Openings (Beckett, 2010, p. 70) are different to Kole social activities, family responsibilities and cultural values. The family and extended family obligations for these activities I just described are reinforced and motivated by practicing Ailan cultural values and socio-cultural etiquette for Ailan pipel living in the Torres Strait and mainland Australia as Beckett (2010, p. 70) claim: Families living on the mainland no doubt find themselves pressed to meet the demands of day-to-day living, but Islanders also find themselves called on to meet financial obligations—particularly for the post-funerary rites, known to Islanders as the ‘tombstone opening’ (cf. Beckett 1987). This requires family and friends not only to erect a tombstone, but to provide an island-style feast at some urban venue. In some instances, the relatives return to the strait to conduct the ceremony. The expense can be considerable; one recent affair was rumoured to have cost $100 000.
The Ailan cultural obligations discussed here include financial obligations as Beckett pointed out. The estimated amount of $100, 000 Beckett mentioned, in my cultural argument and the research focus I reasoned the amount reflect the value of the practicing Ailan pamle cultural obligations and responsibilities over the value on bakir (money). It also showed that Ailan immigrants did not leave their culture behind in the Torres Strait but it was and still remains a strong part of everyday urban Ailan life. I will continue in the next paragraph to elaborate on the value of bakir.
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The annual July 1st (Zuli One) Coming of the Light celebration is a commemoration of the missionary landing in Kemus Bay in Erub on July 1st 1871 and from that landing the Christian gospel was spread throughout the Torres Strait (see Zuli One in glossary).
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The value of money is also different for Ailan pipel and Kole. For Ailan pipel, the obligation is to the collective (family, extended family and community), and the money is a means to an end rather than for the accumulation of personal wealth. My mother would tell me stories of how she would ask Seba mama her sister, who was a nurse at TI Hospital, for money to buy milk for me during her trip from Mer to take me to TI Hospital for check-ups. Another example of sharing activities of the extended family is when mum’s brother had won a lot of money. I remember mum talking about her brother’s money as if it was hers. In trying to make sense of mum and uncle’s sharing activities, for the purpose of this study I reason that the relationships in the extended family culture take priority over everything else, and family (and community) obligations dictate how people behave. My uncle was aware that the money he won was not his money, and that he would share it with his family if they asked him. He also knew that if he gave a portion of the money to mum she would use it for her family including us children. My uncle would be happy in knowing that he fulfilled his obligation in his role as my dad and mum’s brother. I provided a few examples of the Ailan pamle cultural practices associated with the Ailan migration experience. The mainland cultural accounts are about the cultural baggages brought by the Ailan immigrants to the mainland which are reflected in the cultural practices in Ailan urban living of Ailan communities including participation in mainstream Australian society. My current discussion of the topic in this paragraph and the previous ones was executed in a decolonised context and has allowed me through emphasis and elaboration to highlight Ailan cultural factors that are otherwise dormant, for example the factors I drew out from Beckett’s quote. The decolonisation process in this research will aid in making sense of the confusion in the cross-cultural space existing between the Ailan and Kole cultural practices in the Ailan migration experience. The Ailan migration experience is a first-time new event experienced by my parent’s generation, in our memories and of those covered in my 1960s and 1970s research focus period. The migration experience and urbanised living is about adjustment and changes made to our Ailan socio-cultural practices. The basis of the migration experience is described in the next Chapter Seven including a brief discussion of the economic situation in the Torres Strait to maintain the focus of the Ailan migration with events regarding Kole influence and urban living that are relevant to the Ailan migration account.
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CHAPTER 7 THE MIGRATION EXPERIENCE
7.1 Introduction The urban experience for Ailan pipel did not begin in mainland Australia but rather it began in the Torres Strait in TI suburbia. Thus it is only fitting in this chapter that I begin my yarn on migration from my urban childhood living experience on TI. Although this account is a series of memories from my childhood, it also expresses the Ailan cultural practice of my extended family and the overall Ailan community. The memories highlight the differences between Ailan and Kole values that I reason would not have been regarded as important enough to include in my research had I adopted a Kole approach and provided a Kole-based account of migration if I had written it from a Kole perspective. By marrying the Ailan social and cultural activities of my childhood and adult memories and my immigrant experiences with the Kole social expectations of our contemporary Ailan life, I present a unique Ailan perspective of the Ailan migration story which is a unique account of an Indigenous migration story. My yarn is representative of the kind of situations Ailan pipel were living in during the 1960s and 1970s. The use of memory in research is a powerful research tool of the yarning research method. Torres Strait Islander scholar Leah Lui-Chivizhe (2011, p. 38) argue the use of memory in research claiming ‘that memory and oral history continue to provide a critical avenue for Indigenous people to speak about their own experiences.’ Therefore my childhood memories will contribute to this Ailan migration research through the social events of the migration experience covered in this chapter. 7.2 Thursday Island urban experience Although as a child I was not fully aware of the colonial restrictions under which our people in the Torres Strait were living, I still had a strong sense and picture of the Kole (white Man) from the political conversations of adults and from my own childhood perspective and experience. I remember my first day at primary school in TI and the first time I attempted to speak English and had to communicate with a Kole teacher. For some reason, I became afraid and wanted to go home. I remember trying to make some excuse for going home and the words I used to the teacher was, ‘he haven’t got’. I guess the teacher soon became aware of my intention and let me leave the class and go home, or may have arranged for me to go
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home. We lived in a rented house in Hastings Street, a main road about 300 metres from the school. I can only recall snippets but I remember that first day I went to school and then I was home before school had finished. I later learnt that the primary school I attended as a child in 1965 had a history of segregation. Thursday Island had a Kole population and at times Ailan pipel were restricted by the Aboriginal Protector from entering TI (Haddon, 1935, p. 17) under the racist segregation policy (Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35). Shnukal (2001, pp. 21-35) describes the urban situation in TI and how it affected its mixed population claiming that: Pre-war Thursday Island, like most Queensland towns with large non-white populations, was racially segregated. The local schools, swimming baths, dance hall and open air movie theatre (with its two entrances and types of seating, one for whites and one for blacks) were all segregated and hotels were barred to ‘Aboriginals’. Marriage, sexual relations and even friendships between blacks and whites were officially disapproved of. The Catholic school and orphanage on Thursday Island was not segregated but state schooling was, according to the racial classification of the period. The ‘white’ state school was attended by children of European, Japanese, or Chinese descent, the ‘coloured’ state school by children of other heritages. Vestiges of this pervasive segregation, and the culture and mentality it engendered continued even into the early 1980s. The first primary school on the island, Thursday Island State School, opened on 13 July 1885 and was a school for Kole children only. A separate school for ‘coloured children’ was opened in 1913 under the Protector of Aboriginals, and it was renamed Wai-Ben [Waibene] State School on 9 September 1954 (AIATSIS, n.d.). Bebe (Aunty) Ellie Gaffney mentioned in her autobiography that she ‘attended the Thursday Island State School for coloured children’ and that it was a ‘substandard school’ (Gaffney, 1989, p. 25). In 1964, a year before I started school at TI, the coloured school Wai-Ben amalgamated with the Thursday Island State School, ending the segregated schooling arrangements. When I started school in 1965 we had a mixture of white and coloured children (AIATSIS, n.d.). I had school friends and would go to their place after school. At school I would spend most time with my older brother Timothy the son of my mother’s older sister Zaub Big Mama, who moved from Mer to live in Tamwoy Town a suburb on TI which was established after
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World War Two for Ailan people. Some of our Hasting Street neighbours were Ailan people involved in Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal political activities as I later learned. Our next door neighbour was the late Pachie (Uncle) Talep Loban, the eldest brother of Bebe (Aunty) Ellie Gaffney (née Loban). The Lobans are of Torres Strait Islander Maluilgal and Asian heritage (Gaffney, 1989, p. 1). Pachie Talep Loban and Bebe Ellie were and are involved in Torres Strait Islander causes (Gaffney, 1989, pp. 17- 24). Ettie Aua (Uncle Ettie Pau) and his wife Betty Aunty and their pamle lived in a house behind our house. Like Pachie Talep and Bebe Ellie, Ettie Aua was also involved in Torres Strait Islanders causes and as I remember on occasion would travel down south to Canberra for his political activities. Shnukal (2001, pp. 21-35) described the Torres Strait Islander political situation and their movement in the Torres Strait stating that: […] Islanders were not permitted to vote in either State or Federal elections until 1962 (Federal) and 1964 (State). However, they became active in the various organisations which arose after World War Two to support Indigenous rights and self-determination, such as the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (NACC), the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC), the National Aboriginal Education Committee (NAEC) and the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI), whose Islander members included Jacob Abednego, Dulcie Reading Flower, Koiki Mabo, Ettie Pau, Fred Walters and Elia Ware.
Shnukal did not include Pachie Talep (Ted) Loban and Bebe Ellie Gaffney in her above list of members from the Torres Strait but she did provide information about the Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal causes they were involved in including Pachie Talep’s war recognition (pp. 21-35). According to Bebe Ellie however, Joe McGinness invited Pachie Talep Loban, Uncle Ettie Pau and my cousin Jacob Abednego to join FCAATSI. The membership of FCAATSI was Indigenous and non-Indigenous. The Indigenous Australian causes that FCAATSI was involved in include , ‘the equal wages case in the Northern Territory, land rights legislation and changing laws to provide equality with Europeans in education, housing, health and employment. The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders was also ‘instrumental in launching a national campaign’ for ‘the 1967 Referendum’ to remove two discriminatory clauses against
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Aboriginal people from the Australian Constitution. It was originally called the Federal Council of Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA) but in 1964 Torres Strait Islanders was included and it changed to FCAATSI, during that change and the 1969 Referendum I was living in TI attending TI Primary School (Gaffney, 1989, p. 93).
The house we lived in TI was an apartment with two living areas divided by a hall-way. We lived on one side of the apartment and Akar (Grandmother) David and his family lived in the other apartment. We were all related and part of an extended urban Ailan pamle. I remember at times I would see Bebe (Aunty) Ellie Gaffney at uncle Talep’s place but I was not aware of her contributions to Ailan and Aboriginal causes until later when I read her published autobiography. Bebe Ellie was the first Torres Strait Islander to become a qualified nursing sister. She worked in the mainland and was the nursing sister in charge at the Aboriginal Yarrabah Mission in Cairns from 1963 to 1965 (Gaffney, 1989, pp. 50-60). She was an activist and a role model for the women’s cause and for Ailan women.
In her autobiography ‘Somebody now: The Autobiography of Ellie Gaffney, a woman of Torres Strait’ author Bebe Ellie (Gaffney, 1989) mentions the causes she was engaged in on behalf of the Ailan pipel. Bebe Ellie mentions my Nene Mareja Bin Juda (née Doolah) (see Figure 7) referring to her as ‘my late aunt, Mareja Bin Juda’ in the book, and when I read the autobiography I remembered some of the things she wrote about from my childhood recollections (Gaffney, 1989, p. 1). After we moved down south in 1969, I lost contact with the people of the urban community I grew with in TI, including my school friends. However through this migration study after learning about colonisation and its effect on Indigenous Australians and the continued Indigenous struggle for freedom in Australian society I have formed new understanding of TI my birth place, the people in urban center of TI and in the Torres Strait homelands. From the first childhood memories I had of south (the immigrant life and experiences) as I lived in TI to the present, my childhood memories of south is replaced by an acquit awareness of the Ailan struggle which is part of the much bigger Indigenous Australian struggle. The Ailan struggle of the migration experience is the continuing struggle on the mainland which I discuss through my childhood and adult memories and my school and adult experiences in mainland Australia.
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Figure 19: Universal World Church Ministers. Photo taken around 1973 in Townsville Beginning at the back from left to right: Uncle Loyd Maza, Uncle Carlemo Wacando, Front: Uncle Rete Doolah, Aven bala (brother Jimmy Akee) and Jerry bala (brother Jerry Akee).
7.3 Rude shock It was at high school on the mainland in the 1970s that I received a rude shock when I learnt for the first time that not everyone believed in God. Up until that moment, I thought all human beings believed in God. I reasoned it was because my world had become complicated and I was now processing information from three perspectives, the first from Ailan culture, the second from Christianity and the third from the broader Australian society. The Ailan culture and Christianity I learnt more about later on in my adult life; my childhood life was more about functioning in Australian society through my school interactions and the peer group pressure all children go through. There are things of the Ailan culture and Christianity that I was taught as a child not to question, but for the things in Australian society that I faced every day from my interactions at school, I had to formulate my own answers.
In this paragraph I will discuss some of the things I came to accept as a confused migrant Ailan child living in Australian society. As a child I reasoned that I was poor because I was black, (due to all black people in Australia was poor) because of the colour of my skin and
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my so-called race. How could I form such a mind-frame? It was obvious I was black and people called me black; the consciousness of race may have come from inside the classroom. I remember in high school in our geology class the teacher using me as an example to explain how people from different parts of the world have adapted to different climates. ‘John doesn’t get sunburnt because of the dark pigment of his skin’; and then I was thinking, ‘Oh yes I do, I am sensitive to heat and feel the heat of the sun and feel cool under a cap away from the heat of the sun.’ Of course it confused me because I am being taught at school in a classroom Kole valued concepts which challenge my humanity, culture, identity and me as a person. I was a specimen on exhibition an object of study in the classroom used to teach Kole racist social concepts. I was used to reinforce racial difference.
According to my childhood reasoning I was already disadvantaged for being black therefore, what chance did I have in life? The society I was living in and the racism I experienced was reinforcing my difference and implied inferiority. I remember my negative experiences in school more than all the positive ones I had, such as my love for science, being best in my mental work and woodwork classes and being good in soccer and basketball. My negative school experiences formed my overall opinion of school and education to the point where I could not wait to leave school. In my confused state with a negative school experience one of my childhood reasoning for undertaking further schooling would have meant trying to compete with brainy Kole kids where there would have been no chance of succeeding since the odds were against me because of my race and all the disadvantages of being black.
I remember my negative school experiences clearly because I began to switch off learning at school after each negative school experience. In our high school maths class I became very interested in basic algebra. I lost interest after a negative experience I had in one of my other class after a quiz game we had in class. The quiz game involved going around the class naming animals beginning with letters of the alphabet. My turn came when I had to name an animal beginning with the letter ‘O’. ‘Otter’ I quickly replied without hesitation only to be told by our Kole teacher ‘there is no such animal.’ I was very confused and could not understand why I was ridiculed by my teacher in front of the class. My confusion was also about relating my cultural understanding to that classroom experience with my teacher. Through my Ailan culture the teacher was an adult, a person of respect because he or she was in a responsible position, a person in a position of authority, responsible for my learning. Twenty years later my learning about the Australian racism policies in my Aboriginal Studies 100
courses I reasoned that these racism policies may have influenced the Kole teacher’s raciallyprejudice attitude and racist actions toward me. One such policy, the Exclusion on Demand Policy in NSW was still in the Teachers Handbook and was removed in 1972 (Buckskin 2012, p. 24). This policy was within my schooling years. According to Buckskin ( p. 24):
[…] the Exclusion on Demand Policy was enforced. This policy stated that Aboriginal children could not attend school if an objection was received from just one non- Aboriginal parent, and were deemed unclean (p8). Certain individuals and groups within settler society, who held racially-prejudiced attitudes, ensured Aboriginal children were denied adequate levels of education based on the justification of such policies. Foley (2007) notes that the Exclusion on Demand Policy was not removed from the New South Wales Teacher’s Handbook until 1972, highlighting the alarming history of racial discrimination in this country (p108).
The White Australia Policy was also in force since 1901 and removed in 1973. These racist policies may have influenced my teacher’s racist behaviour towards me. It seems the immigrants from the Torres Strait migrated to a mainland society which practiced the same form of racial discrimination as was experienced in the Torres Strait. Ailan immigrant children such as myself had to deal with racism at school (as children of colour and culture still face today) and these experiences have a negative influence on our view of education and school learning in Australian society (Sharp, 1993, p. xii).
From the negative experiences I described above in the previous paragraphs, I reason that my childhood experiences came from a foundation of Torres Strait Islander disadvantage, discrimination, loss of identity, loss of culture and a state of total confusion. In that confused state I would have never been able to form any concept of humanity. If there was any hint of my understanding of humanity, it would have been in isolation removed from the broader Australian society and restricted to Ailan society, where I experienced the compassion, love and kindness. My parents Christian beliefs were contradicted by my negative school experiences which I had to deal with in isolation since I was aware that my my parents were migrants from the Torres Strait and did not understand the mainland Australian school system particular in regards to racist Australia. I wanted my research to reflect a different view to the one I described in the preceding paragraph, a research with an emphasis on humanity and the human side of Ailan pipel regardless of my negative experiences of cultural differences, the
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prejudices and the reasons why people discriminate. Our reality is the way we see the world and the different values whether individualistic or collective. From my childhood understanding there are the ways of all human beings and one the other hand the ways of Kole people with contradictions where we are made to feel inferior to the Kole when we did not fit in.
In the summary of the migration experience in this paragraph I would like to use the concepts of the ‘Y’ journey and my sap lubabat I discussed in the previous Chapter Six. The statement I made in the previous paragraph is about my own confused childhood abstract reality which has nothing to do with discrimination but more a statement about humanity or being denied a place in society or made to feel that denial through the negative childhood experiences. The answer as to how I may have arrived at such conclusions is in my migration account, at least part of it, the parts I document. The parts that are not in my account are those I am still to experience through my learning journey. The experiences in my learning journey are like that of the sap (driftwood), my lubabat (totem). The sap drifts in the ocean currents from ged (place) to ged. It describes the learning journey of Meriam le (person from Mer) a journey of learning from one relationship and place to another. The Indigenous concept of place involves relationships (Ermine, 1995, p. 107). Even when the sap is in a stationary position, (beached somewhere) it does not lose its driftwood identity. The drifting and stationary positions of my lubabat speak of my Meriam identity, and my journey, including my research and tertiary education journey and of my giz (origins). The sap journey has no end based on the concept of our Ailan cyclical timeframe. The endless sap journey is about establishing and maintaining connections. The sap has a beginning and in this research my story has a beginning and my childhood memories of my Torres Strait and mainland experience provided a beginning for the Ailan migration account. The migration experience is also the beginning of resistance which I will discuss in the next Chapter Eight.
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CHAPTER 8 FOUNDATION FOR RESISTANCE
8.1 Introduction In this Chapter Eight the account of the ‘Company Boats’ is an event in Ailan history where my people were dispossessed for the second time. The incident of the Compnay Boats resulted in a response from Ailan pipel which were part of a number of resistance movement by Ailan pipel against the restrictive government policies in the post-invasion history in the Torres Strait and the Ailan migration is part of that movement. Ailan families and communities were given the opportunity to buy their own pearling boats. They paid for the boats and owned the boats but it was taken away from them by the Protector and the money they made from their boats was deposited into a passbook account. To withdraw the money they earned they had to ask permission and sometimes they were denied permission to withdraw the money (Sharp, 1993, pp. 141, 176, 188, 208, 214). The ‘tightening of the powers of the Protection in the early 1930s’ and the control of Ailan pipel’s money not only affected Ailan pipel but also the TI shop keepers and economy. Resentment of the way they were treated led to the dispute of the major 1936 Maritime Ailan strike (Sharp, 1993, pp. 184, 185). The Ailan and Aboriginal men faced similar injustice when they were paid lower army wages than the Kole and Asian soldiers and ‘they staged sit-down strikes in 1943 and 1944 to demand full pay and an end to discriminatory treatment’ (Sharp, 1993, pp. 222-224; Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35). The decolonisation process used in this research highlights the Kole influence and effect on Ailan pipel and society including issues of self-determination which will be factors discussed and emphasised in the next Chapter Nine.
8.2 The company boats and Ailan autonomy As the Kole economy developed into the 1900s Ailan pipel had the opportunity of working their own boats (company boats) (Sharp, 1993, p. 160). These boats operated in two forms of organisation; either as family boats supporting the extended family cultural responsibilities or alternatively as ‘community boats’. The community lugger scheme had been started by philanthropic effort in 1897 to free Indigenous people from dependence on large and exploitative companies. ‘In 1917 some 550 Torrers Strait Islanders worked on pearling boats,
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about half of them on community-owned company boats, typically employed as swimming divers’ (Queensland Historical Atlas, n.d.). Since Ailan pipel were ‘subject to Protection’ after 1901 (Sharp, 1993, p. 35), the autonomous Company Boat developments operated within the strict confines of the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, where they challenged their restriction of freedom with the paternalistic colonial government. They fought back when it affected their strong cultural values and cultural obligations and responsibilities that led to the Torres Strait Islander 1936 Maritime Strike. In 1904 two missionaries formed Papuan Industries Limited, a non-profit company that provided loans for Ailan pipel to buy their own boats (luggers), and which provided a way for them to avoid being exploited by foreigners (Sharp, 1993, pp. 158-163). For many years it was jointly conducted by the Papuan Industries Limited and the Queensland Government’s Department of Native Affairs, and became very popular among Ailan pipel, who used the luggers that they were able to purchase through this scheme for transport, visiting, and various kinds of subsistence fishing (Sharp, 1993, 161). According to Mullins (2012, p. 39), the company boats operated from 1904 until the late 1960s. The Queensland Government became partners with Papuan Industries Limited and took over completely in 1930 when the missionary founders retired. 8.3 New stricter local Protector My dad Gara Doolah lived with his Uncle Charlie Doolah at Erub and he married my mother Harriet Doolah (née Bourne) at Mer. In the late 1950s he was transported from Erub to Mer for his wedding ceremony on one such Eastern Island community company boat called ‘Loyalty’. The Eastern Islanders became unpopular with the government because of their usage of their company boats for private community purposes because the strong Ailan culture of sharing and community ownership was not a favourable mix with the money-making business aspect of the government. Unfavourable changes occurred when a new Chief Protector took over from the Hon. John Douglas, who passed away in 1904. The Ailan pipel were under the Queensland Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. The new Protector followed the Act strictly and Ailan pipel were declared ‘Aborigines’ for the purposes of the Act (Watkin, 2009, pp. 49, 50). Sharp (1981, p. 111) states that there was
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‘closer supervision of Islanders’ freedom of movement, increased pressure concerning the working of company boats and a stepping up of direct interference in all aspects of Islander life’. 8.4 Sharing, giving and returning This strict regime forced Ailan pipel to fight back when the responsibilities they had for their own boats were taken away. They did not manage the profits they made like they had done previously. The government introduced a passbook system, where the money of Ailan pipel was paid into accounts. They were only allowed to withdraw their own money once every week. Sometimes the government teacher on the Island, who had been appointed by the Protector to manage the passbooks, would refuse Ailan pipel outright the withdrawal of their own money (Watkin, 2009, p. 49; Sharp, 1993, pp. 176,184). This money (the tangible reward they earned from working their company boats) was not only used to buy things for the immediate family but to meet the extended family obligations and broader community obligations that are the intangible rewards of Ailan socio-cultural practice (Sharp, 1993, p. 176). The tombstone opening ceremony is just one example of the strong Ailan giving and sharing social relationship. The sharing in giving and returning in this ceremony and other activities is a key part of Ailan social life; it is taken for granted. A Meriam elder explains the meaning of the ‘giving’ and ‘sharing’ social activity of a ceremony at a tombstone unveiling at TI: at the end of 1980: ‘It’s not a day of wealth or anything, but it’s part of our culture, that sharing part’. In the circles of gifts of calico and coins, of acts of kindness given and returned, the group sees itself re-formed (Sharp, 1993, p. 116).
8.5 Restricting cultural obligations The restrictions imposed on the people’s spending by the local Protector’s disciplinary measures severely restricted my people’s strongly felt cultural obligations in their social giving and sharing activities. It would have placed unbearable stress on them. The obligation is part of the social duty of the giver which was embedded in the fabric of the Ailan culture. The stress was heightened because the money was earned for services rendered and should have been paid, but could not be accessed because of what I described as a childish disciplinary rule.
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The other injustice is that the company boats were not freely given to Islanders. They struggled and paid for the boats out of their own sweat, the boats were theirs (Sharp, 1993, pp. 188, 209). This sense of outrage and injustice was a migration push cultural factor, as some people wanted to leave the unjust system behind. It was also one of the reasons why the Ailan pipel went on strike in 1936 (pp. 184–202). 8.6 Strike the Ailan Way Times have changed in the Torres Strait under the colonial rule (Sharp 1993, p. vii). Our Ailan elders began to plan a major strike for the whole of the Torres Strait. They reasoned the strike through their Ailan culture and communicated with each other. The Ailan communities met at sea to plan the strike; it was a location of significance and was symbolic for the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait. The Torres Strait Islander strike was not a union strike as Ailan pipel was still under the Protection Act and the Protector and could not join or be represented by a union. It was a community strike and the Ailan communities represented themselves. The strike was not based on union regulations but on the cultural values of a free people. The strike and its events established a history of the resistance movement of Ailan pipel which included the Ailan migration. Before I discuss the 1936 Torres Strait Islander Maritime Strike I would like to first link the strike to the experience of my Uncle Umbar Steven in the mainland. The link is about the Ailan cultural practice of taking advice from our elders. My account of the link relates to the wisdom of the advice of Marou Ata my Grandfather. It also shows that events and movement within Ailan society were guided by the advice and consultation from the wisdom of our Ailan elders.
8.7 The struggle In 1936 the Meriam elder Mimi Marou and other Ailan elders organised a major maritime strike in the Torres Strait (Sharp, 1993, p. 187; Shnukal, 2001), which led to the Torres Strait Islander Act 1939 (AIATSIS, 2014b). For that time period in history the Torres Strait Islander Act 1939 was an aspiration for part Ailan self-determination and autonomy although Ailan pipel did not get what they wanted through the 1936 Torres Strait Islander Maritime Strike and that was to be free of the government and any government acts which restricted their freedom. According to Sharp (1993, p. 193):
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A Saibai Island strike leader had already indicated the reasons when he had said the men wanted to work where and when they liked 'and do just as they want to': to be free citizens, this was the aim.
The struggle for freedom through the strike was implemented in a cultural way led by Ailan and Kaurareg elders of the local communities (Beckett, 1987, pp. 51–54, 112, 102; Sharp, 1993, pp. 181–196, 1992, p. 112; Williamson, 1994, p. 180; Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35). Information from Sharp (1993, pp. 186-188) and Shnukal (2001) reveal that Marou Ata (Grandad Marou) was a leader of the strike. My first knowledge of Marou Ata was in TI. I did not know then what I know now about my Grandfather Meriam elder Marou Ata (Grandad Marou Mimi). In TI my brothers and sisters and I all had nicknames. My nicknamed was ‘Marou’. For me looking back it was an honour and a privilege to have the name of my Ata Marou. Later on in life I learnt more about Marou Ata (Grandad Marou), even about learning how people would ask him for advice which is the strong Ailan cultural practice of confiding in our elders. My dad’s generation maintained a strong cultural practice, and one of these practices was asking their elders for advice and guidance before making major decisions. My dad told me that in his plan to migrate to Australia for work, he sought the advice of my Grandad Marou. Grandad Marou’s advice to my dad was along the following lines in Torres Strait Creole: when youpla go down south and piene work, Kole mun e go boss blor youpla, after youpla go work there, youpla go come boss bor Kole mun. The English translation is: When you and the other men of the Torres Strait migrate to mainland Australia and find work, at first you will be working under the white man, but after working for the white man, eventually you will become the white man’s boss. Speaking from my own railway experience and memories of working with my people, I reason that Grandad Marou might have observed the team work potential of the Ailan men when they worked together cutting cane in Cairns and the freedom associated with it. The culture of working together comes from kinship practices and the practicing Ailan cultural values of maintaining strong cultural social bonds. Grandad Marou’s statement may have been known to most Ailan men of my father’s generation. Reflecting on Grandad Marou’s 107
advice I expand with the account of Ugarem le Uncle Umbar Steven. Uncle Umbar Steven was a ganger of a fettling gang in Townsville. He yarned to us about how he would tell the Kole men in his gang the story of how when he and the other Ailan men first arrived in mainland Australia from the Torres Strait, the white man was their boss, and now he told them he was their (the Kole’s) boss. The point of Uncle Umbar’s story is to shift the attention away from the boast towards emphasising how Uncle and the men who migrated to Australia have experienced being dominated by the Kole, so to become a boss of the Kole was a life’s achievement and satisfaction of being on the same level with Kole. Indigenous Australians have not been recognised for their contributions in Australian society. They volunteered for war service even though they were not treated as citizens of Australia and their contribution to building the Australian nation (sharp, 1993, p. 211). In his own way Uncle Umbar Steven has reminded us that although our efforts are not properly recognised he had the satisfaction of experiencing the unthinkable, an Ailan man the boss of Kole, a move that I reasoned as an exercise of the Ailan rights to self-determination. I reason that Uncle Umbar’s experience is not racist or discriminatory but a reaction of a person that has been discriminated against since the Ailan concept of the Kole is not racial but a description of people of a different culture to that of Torres Strait Islanders, because the concept of race does not exist in Ailan culture, race is a Kole social concept. I further elaborate that Uncle Umbar’s action is the continued resistance of Ailan pipel as that of historical events such as the 1936 Strike and other events I discussed in this thesis which led to the mainland Ailan migration. 8.8 Fighting back The Ailan pipel tolerated the Kole system and the strict control of the new Protector for six years. Finally, led by my Grandfather Marou Mimi and other Ailan and Kaurareg Aboriginal elders, a plan was formed in solidarity, meeting at sea secretly to organise what became known as the 1936 Torres Strait Islander Maritime Strike. According to Loos and Mabo (1996, p. xx): The strike lasted for four months in the Western Islands, while in the east the Murray Islanders boycotted the government controlled fisheries until after World
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War II. Their gardens and the sea could sustain them. Indeed, Murray Islanders are believed to have instigated the strike. Ailan pipel did not get what they wanted from that strike which was to be totally free from the government’s protection policy, ‘full citizenship rights’ and ‘full freedom of home rule’ (Sharp, 1993, pp. 211, 215). The result of the 1936 strike was not favourable to Ailan pipel according to Loos and Mabo (1996, p. 92) reach a different conclusion regarding government manipulation:
After the Torres Strait Islander maritime strike of 1936, Torres Strait Islander Councils were given some local government authority. However, under the Directors of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs, O’Leary and Killoran, this personalised involvement with the Islanders became so effective as a form of soft control that, in the 1960s, the leading activists in the protest movement were nearly all Aboriginal [rather than Ailan]. Geography and language added to the Islanders’ political isolation, cutting them off to a large extent from the supportive black, white and multiracial organisations and pressure groups in the Southern capital cities.
8.9 Paternalist exclusion and restriction The government was still able to restrict the freedom of the Ailan pipel, now through manipulation and ‘soft control’. The strike led up to ‘partial freedom’ (Sharp, 1993, p. 215; 1981, p.2). Even ‘partial’ is still a restriction of freedom, and restriction of freedom is a migration push factor. After the 1936 Maritime strike, the economic conditions in the Torres Strait were still not favourable for the Ailan pipel. Their second strike for equal pay in the Army eight years later in 1945 was an outcome of continuing government paternalism. Sharp (1993, p. 130) has described ‘paternalist exclusion’ as a kind of paternalistic rule reflecting the way government policies and practices combine with racial segregation. She contends it ‘began soon after 1901’ (p. 130) and continued right up to the mid-1980s. In the next paragraph I will begin a new topic of discussion about Ailan participation in World War Two volunteer army service to continue my focus on Ailan resistance in this Chapter Eight.
8.10 Army Taime Torres Strait Islanders and Aboriginal people have served in the Australian army and fought in both World War One and Two but have not been given proper recognition. We continue to write about the injustices of the war participation of Indigenous Australians in respect and 109
honour not only for the Indigenous Australians but all Australians who fought in the World Wars; for those who returned and those who did not return. I honour the memories of those who fought by not only declaring my Ailan identity but also my Australian identity as Koiki Aua (Uncle Eddie Koiki Mabo) reasoned his Australian identity (Loos and Mabo, 1996, p. 56).
Figure 20: Men of Erub who served in Australian Military Forces 1945. 17
The account of Torres Strait Islander participation in World War Two as part of the Ailan migration account is my small contribution along with all who researched Torres Strait
17
This is a plaque of the Eurb mans’ list of A Compnay. My Big Daddy Elia Doolah’s name is half-way up the list of the left column. All my uncles are on this list including Weser Ata (Grandfather Weser Whaleboat); last in the list right-hand column.
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Islanders and Aboriginal people who fought in the World Wars. The World War Two is a bitter-sweet account and both aspects needed to be highlighted to show the social account of the Ailan community. Highlighting the injustices to the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait is a reflection of their continuous struggle in Australian society and serves to provide a balanced account of the Ailan migration. I use the quote of those Ailan pipel who were affected by World War Two to discuss the army taime (time) account of Ailan pipel in this chapter.
8.11 First time relationships of equality Ailan pipel refer to army taime as the period during World War Two when they participated in the war effort in far north Queensland (Sharp, 1993, p. 224). As tensions with the Japanese escalated in mid-1941, recruitment for the armed services began throughout the Islands of the Torres Strait (Osborne, 2009, p. 33). Army taime was a period of temporary freedom and a ‘first time relationships of equality with white people’ (Sharp, 1993, p. 221), although the Department of Native Affairs (DNA) still discriminated against Ailan pipel, as will be discussed in later paragraphs. Figure 20 is the list of men from Erub who served in the army. In the oral histories, I find two different impressions of the recruitment process, differing by location. One account states that the Ailan men were very cooperative and the other is that they were forced to serve. The message from the army was that if they volunteered for active service, after the War they would receive equal citizenship rights and be treated like Kole Australians (Sharp, 1993, pp. 130, 211). Of course the DNA did not promise anything (Loos and Mabo, 1996, p. 31), and their actions toward Ailan pipel during the War demonstrated the same neglect and dehumanising treatment which had led Ailan pipel to strike in 1936. 8.12 Discontent and neglect In what follows, I will describe several sources of discontent: the neglect of families of servicemen, forcing Islanders into the military and unequal pay. The first source of discontent was the way DNA neglected the wives and children in the local islands when the men were stationed at TI. Islander women, children and men not eligible for army service experienced the War differently to those in the fighting forces. They were organised in small detachments away from the villages by the Army—Malay Town, Wild India, Hollywood and Arizona— and they experienced both privation and a new solidarity within each Island community.
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Sharp (1993, p. 221) reveals, ‘“And when the War was finished we praised God and were so happy that the tears rolled down our faces”, a very old lady at Badu recalled to me’. In June 1947, the Director of Native Affairs described the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion as having ‘performed an excellent war service for the nation’ (QPP 1948, p. 2, cited in Sharp, 1993, p. 221). Oral statements of former Ailan diggers recorded by Sharp seem to provide a different picture, implying discontent with the actions of the DNA. The following quotation from an Australian soldier refers both to the neglect of women and children and to equal pay: I remember talking it over with my officers that they [the Islanders] took the same oath; they could be ordered to go anywhere same as me or the others and they were only getting a pittance in pay. I always have thought it was unfair. As the months went on they got wiser; they knew and they asked, ‘Why do we get small money [compared to white soldiers]?’; but it was not against the Army personnel, it was against the DNA [Director of Native Affairs], because of allotment money. It happened at Thursday Island at the DNA office; it never happened on Army grounds. I heard that the main blue was at the DNA. Little grapevine bits coming back by word of mouth found out that the women were getting nothing on the [outer] islands, they were starving practically. There was no money, no food, nothing for them and they couldn’t get it unless they had the necessary papers sent over by the DNA. That’s what they always resented. Everything had to go before the DNA and the DNA was god; he was god sitting up on the throne. He said yea or nay and that was it (Sharp, 1993, p. 224). 8.13 Ailan women army taime contribution The resourcefulness of the women who had to take care of their families while the men were serving in the army was very impressive: ‘[b]y sheer hard work and resourcefulness, Ailan women kept their families clothed throughout the war’ (Taylor et al., 2005, pp. 197–201). In late 1941 Ailan women received Child Endowment for the first time. However, the DNA would sometimes withhold Endowment payments, or the families would not receive full payments. They were warned by the Kole teacher, ‘[t]he moneys would be withheld…if they bought large quantities of materials instead of spending it on the children’ (Taylor et al., 2005, pp. 197–201). It is ironic that during army taime Ailan women in the face of constant danger, isolated in their homeland communities while their men were in volunteer armed
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service stationed away from them and their children in TI were surviving on a subsistence economy took care of their children without Kole help, and then when they were finally paid Child Endowment payments, the Ailan women were instructed how they should spend their money as if they were irresponsible parents (p.197).
Figure 21: Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion 18
8.14 Negative experiences Besides the negative treatment of Ailan women there are other negative experiences in regards to the army recruitment of Ailan men (Osborne, 2009, pp. 33, 34). The volunteer army service gave Ailan pipel the chance to learn about the Kole and experienced for the first time equality. Learning about the Kole is not about wanting to become the Kole through assimilation, but as part of the Ailan social culture of forming a close social relationship with others. The Ailan culture is about how to behave in a respectful manner (good pasin). This is
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A squad of Ailan men of the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion 1945 in Thursday Island. Source: Australian War Memorial Photo ID No. 119169
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the reaction of an Ailan man when he was first given information about studying at a university from his Kole mate: So I thought to myself: Well, if I join up it’s not going to be the bloody Torres Strait Light Infantry for me. I’m going to join a white unit because I won’t learn nothing in the Torres Strait Light. But I’ll be able to learn more by serving next door to a white bloke and be able to ask him things, because I want to know like a white man (Sharp, 1993, p. 167).
Ailan individuals share the same view in the above quote but in their own way from their own experiences of mixing with Kole people. Another quote from an Ailan man with a similar idea of learning both Ailan and Kole cultures, this person provided his own reasons claiming: ‘I continued to think that by drawing the best out of both worlds you’d come up with something totally unique’ (Sharp, 1993, p. 39). He was motivated through his own experience with the Kole. He wanted to know more about their ways and he admitted, that ‘One of the things that I did when I came south was try and see if they were around [the Kole he befriended]. I actually investigated white culture and discovered it for myself’ (p. 39). In another Ailan man’s example he: combined the new world with his own without outright interference from Kole. It was ‘natural’ for him to bring back his experience from the outside world to help his people (Sharp, 1993, p. 40).
It seems it was all about learning the Kole way to benefit Ailan pipel and the Ailan experience, the wisdom in the action of the Ailan person, ‘was [about] putting the two worlds together that [the] Kole had kept apart’ (1993, p. 40). I reason that the learning experience of equality in World War Two at TI also reaffirm a sense of fair play and a new understanding that Ailan pipel were no different to Kole people and caused Ailan men to question the superiority of the Kole in post-invasion Australian society. In the next Chapter Nine I discuss the challenges of living in a Kole world, a place and space that is different of the Ailan world. I reason that there is a space where Ailan and Kole is able to live together and some of our people in the Ailan migration history have operated in that space and that is what the discussion in Chapter Nine is about. The discussion in Chapter Nine is also about our Indigenous voice emphasizing the stance of my Ailan migration account as an account of reinforcing our Ailan worldviews and values which include an emphasis of the meaning of the migration in relation to Ailan cultural concepts and reasoning.
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CHAPTER 9 ESTABLISHING FOUNDATION AND THE EFFECT
9.1 The concept of migration and Eurocentric Kole boundaries According to Indigenous Australian cosmologies and world-view, in the strictest sense the concept of migration is a foreign Kole (Eurocentric) phenomenon introduced into the local Ailan society in the Torres Strait, resulting from capitalist economic expansion. Indigenous peoples in other parts of the world may have migrated from their original place of origin due to natural disasters or other reasons, but in situations that cannot be compared to Indigenous Australians who have been in occupation for about 60,000 Kole scientific years and are believed to be the oldest living culture in the world (Poroch, 2012, p. 383). The basis of my storytelling account is from my living Ailan cultural perspective and worldview. Moving to the mainland does not mean Ailan pipel are disconnected from their cultural practices; connections are maintained between the Ailan migrants and people living in the Torres Strait homeland. According to Sharp (1993, p. 10), migrants retain: links to kinsfolk, in-laws and friends in the Strait through personal visits for burials, tombstone unveilings, weddings and recreational purposes, and through the Islander ‘yam vine’—their bush telegraph system which operates actively through their churches, dance groups, sports activities, pubs, as well as kinship and Eastern or Western Islander networks. 9.2 Interdisciplinary view of cultural account The holistic nature of Indigenous culture means that there are overlaps of different concepts because Indigenous life and living practice is about maintaining connections. Therefore, my living cultural practice is not fragmented and there is no barrier or boundary in my culture other than the Eurocentric Kole boundaries of different research disciplines and epistemologies, fragmenting my culture into different disciplinary areas. Indigenous Torres Strait society does not function in separate parts, at least not according to the pre-invasion international social trade relationships between peoples of multicultural diversity and the four major continental geographic areas of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Torres Strait and Australia. The Kole references to each nation and culture group separate the groups racially,
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but traditional trade relationships established a transcultural social connection, which I reason (based on our Torres Strait regional diversity) is an Indigenous social practice for linking diverse groups together. Therefore, Kole terms and practices separate, but Indigenous traditional socio-cultural practice connects people with people and people with places according to pre-invasion preferences and through post-invasion cultural struggles. 9.3 How we measure up to the Kole The struggle to maintain traditional Ailan culture is part of post-invasion and contemporary Ailan life (Pitt, 2005) and how we measure up to Kole expectations. If the documentation of the history and contemporary life of Ailan society and people reflect only the influence of Kole culture and values, then, whether directly, indirectly or more subtly, it will perpetuate the loss of or suppress the Ailan culture. The processes that are responsible for the loss of Ailan culture have been recognised and documented by ad le (outsiders) and now Ailan academics and researchers such as Nakata (1997); Watkin (2009); Pitt (2005); Gaffney (1989); Lui-Chivizhe (2011); Mosby (2013); and Whap (2001) who are writing about their own society and people from an insider view and the perspective of the colonised. 9.4 Decolonised approach highlights Kole influence The Torres Strait Islander migration is an indigenous migration and includes cultural factors and issues relating to and affecting indigenous peoples within nation-states such as identity, traditional territories and rights to self-determination (Trujano, 2008, pp. 13-16). In this postgraduate research I use an Indigenous cultural approach and employed Indigenous research methodologies and method. The Torres Strait Islander Indigenous migration has a colonial history as support by Thornberry (1991, p. 322) who claim that ‘the history of indigenous peoples is a history of colonialism.’
The use of Indigenous research methodologies applies the decolonisation process to my research in the data collection and text analysis. The decolonization process in research is a process of reclaiming, re-writing and re-righting the past wrongs of colonialism from the colonized perspective (Smith, 1999, p. 28; Lavallee, 2009, p. 23). Smith (1999, p. 7) describes the same process as ‘researching back’ which she reasons in a sense is equivalent to ‘writing back or talking back.’ A definition of decolonization is needed to further clarify the process involved, so for this reason I will use Mussell’s definition of decolonization. According to Mussell (2008, p. 4) ‘[d]ecolonization refers to a process where a colonized
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people reclaim their traditional culture, redefine themselves as a people and reassert their distinct identity.’ Therefore, using the decolonising research approach in this postgraduate study is beneficial to Torres Strait Islander society through the self-determination processes described in Mussell’s definition of decolonisation. The decolonised approach is used to separate and highlight the Kole influence and values from traditional Ailan culture and practice. It is, therefore, a culturally appropriate protocol that has been adopted as part of the Indigenous methodology of this thesis. The decolonised view challenges the appropriateness and elements of acceptability of an imposing Kole culture and value system. Maintaining our Ailan identity is part of the struggle of maintaining Ailan cultural practice. One of the Ailan migration push factor which I will discuss in later paragraphs is the need to be free of government control in the Torres Strait. I argue the need for freedom is also an exercise of the self-determination rights of Ailan people through the migration. 9.5 Ailan rights to self-determination I argue that the migration of Ailan pipel is the result of colonization, dispossession and the introduction of the Kole capitalist economy. Based on this argument I reason that the whole migration experience from the Torres Strait to mainland Australia is an account of Torres Strait Islander self-determination. Before elaborating on Indigenous self-determination I will first provide a brief background of the self-determination concept which is linked to colonisation and decolonisation. Self-determination is a universal human rights concept that according to Maguire (2013, pp. 238, 240) ‘retains the potential to meet the needs of these contemporary, anti-colonial claimants’ which specifically are colonised people. In the contemporary Indigenous experience cases of self-determination by anti-colonial claimants ‘involve peoples who can demonstrate a continuing colonial experience’ (p. 238).
In her article titled, ‘Contemporary Anti-Colonial Self-Determination Claims and The Decolonisation of International Law’ author Amy Maguire identified Indigenous Australians as contemporary anti-colonial self-determination claimant and reasoned that their situation in Australia belong to ‘claimant groups [who] are abandoned to the political whims of their administering states’ (Maguire, 2013, p. 238). Beckett (1988, p. 17) describes Maguire’s reference of political abandonment for Indigenous peoples in Australia claiming ‘Aborigines have come to be viewed as both 'inside the state, but outside the nation.’ Nevertheless
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Maguire presented important factors regarding self-determination which applies to the Indigenous struggle (Smith, 1999, p. 7) here in Australia concerning the rights of the Ailan and Aboriginal peoples of the Torres Strait and in the context of this postgraduate study these factors are linked to the Ailan migration.
The mention of self-determination for Torres Strait Islanders is appropriate in regards to its introduction into Indigenous Australian policy in the 1907s. The self-determination concept was adopted as Indigenous policy (replacing the policy of assimilation) by the Whitlam Labor Government in 1972 which is within my 1970s research migration timeframe (Sanders, 2002, p. vii; Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35). Torres Strait Islander woman Bebe (Aunty) Ellie Gaffney commented on the effect of the self-determination policy of the Whitlam Government in Thursday Island (TI) stating how ‘the Thursday Island Tennis club, self appointed cream of Thursday Island society (all white);’ all the power they believed they projected began to diminish ‘since the Whitlam government came into power’ (Gaffney, 1989, p. 43). The governments of Australia however failed to implement self-determination in their Indigenous policies as Sherwood (2006, p. 186) claimed ‘Australia is the only first nation country where Aboriginal peoples have no policy for self-determination’ (Sherwood, 2006, p. 186). Mercer (1997, p. 191) refer to the self-determination position of Indigenous Australians as ‘some kind of limited self-determination.’ Through Maguire’s qualitative research interviews and research analysis using a grounded theory approach her results ‘demonstrate that the self- determination claims of these peoples [including Indigenous Australians] are stifled by the denial of their contemporary colonial experiences’ (Maguire, 2013, p. 238).
Nevertheless, although the self-determination rights of Indigenous Australians are politically suppressed they are still able to exercise their rights to self-determination in Australia because self-determination is covered by human rights and the United Nations Charter (Maguire 2013, pp. 238, 240, 245), the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples and monitored in Australia as a social justice issue by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (Sherwood, 2006, p. 186). According to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma (2005) the primary function of the HREOC:
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is to advocate for social justice, which implies that people can make choices about how they live and have the means to make these choices. Social justice recognises: the right to a distinct status and culture; the right to self-determination; and the right to land.
In regards to my chosen research focus timeframe Maguire (2013, p. 238) claimed ‘[t]he right of self-determination was deeply engaged in the process of decolonisation, which peaked in the 1960s and 1970s.’ Thus the period I chose for my research was also a significant period for Indigenous decolonization activities through their rights to self-determination. Therefore, the post-invasion movement of Torres Strait Islanders in the Torres Strait homeland region and mainland Australia, their efforts to exercise their rights to self-determination was to free themselves from colonialism, imperialism, including government paternalism and legacy (Maguire, 2013, p. 241; Osborne, 2009, p. 4). It is ironic however about Ailan pipel leaving their homeland for freedom on the mainland because there have never been such freedom for Indigenous peoples in Australia. This is reflected in O’Malley’s (1994, p. 48) description for Aboriginal people as being ‘one of the most governed people on earth.’ The 1960s and 1970s timeframe thesis discussions of the migration account is set in a background of Kole discrimination and white Australian racism policy practices on Indigenous Australians which I explained in my yarn in the chapters of this thesis (Sandri, 2015, p. 77). Self-determination in the Ailan migration account is linked to forces behind the migration including push and pull migration factors. Push factors are factors which forced Ailan pipel from the Torres Strait and the opportunities that south life offered the Ailan immigrants are pull factors.
9.6 Push and pull migration factors According to Bukowczyk (1989, p. 63) the combination of push and pull factors are what ‘set the immigrants in motion.’ Job and education opportunities are the obvious pull factors for Ailan pipel, including other factors such as freedom from government control and kinship responsibilities which I discussed in the chapters of this thesis. The overall political, social and economic changes that took place in the Torres Strait and in mainland Australia provide the setting for the push and pull migration factors. Ultimately all the push and pull migration factors are the direct results of Kole influence through damage to the traditional Indigenous way of life due to the invasion and colonisation of Torres Strait Islanders and their society.
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There is also the need to discuss the relationships and meaning of the push and pull migration terms and the Kole use of the terms in reference to Ailan terms of reference. Push and pull factors cannot be isolated in a cultural context because of the complex Ailan social relationships, so that different factors may act together in tandem, or in opposition to one another. For this reason I explained that the messy text of my yarning approach and reasoned that the structure of my discussion is more social focused than topic focused.
9.7 Kole and culture approach My approach to the topics in what follows will be of accounts presented from two broad perspectives. The first group of accounts is the reasons stated by Kole observers for Ailan migration and the second is the accounts describing the cultural reasons that drove Ailan pipel away from their Indigenous homeland, reinforcing Ailan cultural integrity in a combined cultural discussion within the Ailan and Kole cross-cultural space. The discussion of my account is within the context of Ailan resistance to Kole domination. The Kole reasons for the migration in my yarn covers the economic opportunities and the concept of migration itself, while the cultural account will cover the changes of the traditional way of life for the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait. The cultural account will also describe the restrictions placed on Ailan freedom resulting in the difficulty of meeting kinship obligations and responsibilities. 9.8 Traditional and post-invasion background My account of the traditional Ailan economy will be used to provide a foundation for my cultural reasoning and at the same time it will provide a rationale to cover factors resulting from the Kole invasion that affected the Torres Strait Indigenous way of life and are the primary cause’ and push factor behind the migrations. Post-invasion events in the Torres Strait such as the collapse of the pearling industry, the 1936 Maritime Strike, the Army equal wages strike and resistance to government control are the background to the conditions and forces that contributed to the migration south (Beckett, 2004, p.10; Sharp, 1993, pp. 181-211, 222-225). Although there are other reasons and dates for Ailan migration, my study is narrowly focused and my timeframe is in the 1960s and 1970s. Push and pull factors of events (including economic, social and political changes, as well as those already mentioned) in the Torres Strait leading up to this period will be discussed in this chapter.
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9.9 Managing change The political, social and economic changes that took place in the Torres Strait influenced Ailan pipel, motivating some of them to seek employment opportunities and an alternate lifestyle in mainland Australia. Amongstt the changes that did take place, the traditional cultural practices of my people were maintained. All changes that did take place, affecting the lifestyle of my people were appropriately managed by Ailan society, which allowed my people to maintain cultural integrity and strong social relationship practices in Australian society. Working within a strong cultural context or framework is how Ailan society manages the changes imposed by Kole society. Although part of Ailan society was now living on the mainland, Ailan society did not break apart into two separate groups. The separation into the two groups was a transition of the Ailan immigrants from the traditional way of life in the Torres Strait to an urban living environment in mainland Australia. The Ailan pipel in the Torres Strait were dealing with two major types of forces: the internal forces affecting their traditional way of life, and the external forces, such as the political, social and economic changes within the Torres Strait and on the mainland. Sharp (1993, p. xi) acknowledged the Kole influences behind these changes by referring to ‘the forces of change’ in her Ailan migration account. Sharp maintained that a new modern Ailan identity had been created as the result of these changes (p. xi). My particular interest is in Sharp’s description of how Ailan pipel managed the change themselves within their own society and culture. Sharp’s (1993) account was set in the late 1970s the focus period of this study; it encompasses issues concerning how Ailan pipel manage change. 19 She believes that ‘the forces of change’ resulted in the creation and re-creation of ‘a modern Ailan identity…continuous with, yet different from, the old’. She seems to suggest that the traditional ways were maintained and that the changes that did take place were all of the Ailan pipel’s doing. She states, ‘the forces of change, together with the power of social processes inherent within the pre-existing [Ailan] culture, resulted in the modern Ailan identity’ (p. xi). It should be pointed out however that these changes were not instituted without resistance and the continous struggle to maintain the Ailan culture and identity in Australia society.
19
Sharp’s account may have been for both groups of Ailan people in the Torres Strait homeland and Ailan immigrants down South.
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9.10 Twenty year focus 1960s to 1970s Major changes took place in the 20 year period of the 1960s and 1970s affecting the lives of Ailan and Aboriginal people. In this 20 year period I chose to focus my research this period was where changes which impacted on my people and myself brought new experiences to Ailan pipel affecting our culture which for the most part challenged our Ailan cultural continuity particularly the impact of Ailan migration. This 20 year period is also a period where our rights to self-determination and the concepts of decolonisation was realised and is discussed and emphasised in the context of the Ailan migration and my tertiary education journey and migrant experiences.
I used Sharp’s 1980 Ailan migration population claim for my discussion in which she claims by the year mentioned half of the Ailan population had migrated from the Torres Strait and was now resettled in mainland Australia. This means that during the twenty year 1960s and 1970s research timeframe there were increase in outward mobility of Torres Strait Islanders, a trend which continued with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2006 census estimation figures showing the Torres Strait Islander population at 47, 325 ‘with 6, 958 or 15 percent left residing in the Torres Strait [homeland] region. Sixty-one percent of Torres Strait Islanders live in mainland Queensland while 16.3 percent reside in New South Wales’. This means that from Sharp’s 1980 Torres Strait Islander population statement the migrant population increased by more than a half of the Torres Strait Islander population. The purpose for presenting the Torres Strait Islander population figures is to show an increase within the 1960s and 1970s period with Beckett’s base figure of more than five hundred Torres Strait Islander migrant for twenty year period (Beckett, 1977, p. 99; 1987, p. 72). This also indicates that the Torres Strait Islander migrant urban population was more settled and most had gained employment in the late 1970s in other areas of the Australian job market besides railway work including mainland return to education in tertiary studies. In the late 1970’s one of my Dad Donald Whaleboat Snr graduated with a teachers degree at the James Cook University in Townsville. His achievement is an inspiration for us his children and pamle and all Torres Strait Islanders and a confirmation of our aspirations for our self-determination struggle through tertiary education.
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During the 1960s and early 1970s however the majority of the Torres Strait Islander immigrants worked along the coast of Queensland with strong concentration in the cities of Cairns, Townsville and Brisbane (Watkin, 2009, p. 65). Some Ailan immigrants found jobs in the Northern Territory (NT) and railway work in Western Australia (WA) in the Pilbara region (Beckett, 2010, p. 68). My research is not focused on NT or WA but it is linked to the Ailan migration experience and re-settlement of my pamle (family), concentrating on the Ailan migration events primarily in mainland Queensland where I grew up. There are two Ailan communities of Seisia and Bamaga in mainland Cape York (Watkin, 2009, p. 61). Although I have family in Bamaga, in this migration research I will not be focusing on these two mainlands Ailan communities because the timeframe of that migration and re-settlement was earlier than the 1960s and 1970s period chosen for this research.
The 1960s and 1970s is also a period where I was able to provide a strong Ailan sociocultural account because it was a period of our fathers and mothers generation and they still maintained the strong Ailan cultural practice as I recall from my the memories of my mainland urban experience. Most of my fathers and mothers generation who migrated to the mainland did not forget the life they had in the Torres Strait and reinforced that in their migrant life. Some of the Ailan migrant families moved back to the Torres Strait which would constitute return migration according to the Kole concept of permanent migration but for Ailan pipel it would be returning home because based on our Ailan cultural reasoning and concept of ged (home) we never left. The concept of never leaving our homeland is true to the global indigenous experience of migration.
My own father Gara Doolah intended to move back to Mer in the 1980s and would have eventually if he did not pass away in Cairns. Following his Ailan cultural protocol dad asked advice from his Uncle Meriam elder Quintel Wailu, before he would move back to Mer and build his home in Warwe village, Doolah’s ged (land). The conversations I had with my dad would sometimes comprise of hours just silently listening to him talking about his experiences in the Torres Strait. My migration experience includes spending my childhood time sitting quietly listening to the conversations of Ailan adults (big pipel) and was told sometimes to ‘go away and play.’
Listening to our elders was the cultural way I grew up with and it still has a strong meaning in my life. These conversations not only allowed me to learn about my culture but also in 123
acknowledging that my learning came from our oral culture which did not only include what I had heard but also through a combination of what I heard and what I saw and experienced in my Ailan cultural practice which I reason to be our social reality. For me it means my Ailan culture and how it is communicated in our social practice is not just about words but and combination of words and action, non-verbal communication and how we interpret our actions through our Ailan cultural lens to communicate the Ailan way. It is not just the spoken words that are being communicated but also the unspoken words communicated and processed by the receiver.
I use the account of Koiki Aua by Noel Loos to reinforce my reasons for choosing the 1960s and 1970s timeframe to focus my research as Loos claimed:
Koiki Mabo, as he preferred to be known, described the years of childhood and adolescence spent on Murray Island, or Mer, as the happiest days of his life. Indeed, emotionally and intellectually, he never left Mer, even though he lived most of his life on the mainland, chiefly in Townsville (Loos and Mabo, 1996, p. 4).
Loos’ statement in the quote that ‘he [Koiki Aua] never left is a powerful statement reinforcing my research focus that the emphasis of cultural factors such as the one made by Loos is as important to the push and pull factor reasons of the Ailan migration as the Kole economic reasons. Lack of work opportunities in the Torres Strait is a strong push factor encouraging migration, but the post-contact political and socio-cultural factors that I emphasised in the last sentence of the previous paragraph and the underlying escape to freedom from oppression and suppression is also very important. Ailan social factors emphasise people relationships, activities of connection and the maintaining of these activities. Money replaced the strong reciprocal and kinship obligations of the Ailan communities and Island nations throughout the Torres Strait and the capitalist system replaced the traditional economy, which in turn limited and restricted Ailan social obligations and cultural practices. 9.11 Analysing traditional economy The traditional Ailan economy was a subsistence economy where our ancestors depended on resources from the land and sea, through hunting, fishing and trade (instead of money
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exchange) activities to provide for their basic needs. Concepts of the Indigenous subsistence economy are built into the social relationship cultural practices of Ailan society which does not include emphasise on the value of money. The non-monetary aspect of the Ailan subsistence economy reinforces the argument regarding the cultural focus of the research, since the migration was for Kole reasons and the capitalist economy that Ailan pipel participated in after dispossession and exploitation in the Torres Strait. The focus of this research was to look at an Ailan cultural reason for the migration besides the Kole migration economic reasons and the topic of traditional Ailan economy will contribute to the migration discussion. The traditional Ailan economy operated across the Torres Strait and was the Indigenous economic system of the culturally diverse independent Indigenous island nations of the Torres Strait (Sharp, 1993, pp. 27-33; Shnukal, 2001, pp. 21-35). Based on the terrestrial regions of the Torres Strait and its Indigenous people, Carter (2006, p. 290) summarised the traditional Ailan economy by stating that: Early observations of subsistence strategies in Torres Strait describe a mixed economy of marine resource procurement and horticulture, combined with limited hunting and gathering of terrestrial resources…Marine subsistence included a number of activities such as the gathering of intertidal shellfish, near-shore and offshore reef fishing, and the hunting of turtle and dugong. However, dependence on marine resource types varied throughout the Strait, largely as a result of the diversity of marine environments and variability in distance to major resource zones, such as Orman reef located north-east of Mabuiag. The pre-invasion practices in the regions of the Torres Strait maintained a stable Ailan economy based on relationships which according to Kole scientific evidence mentioned above developed over a period between 2,500 – 8,500 years (Carter, 2006, pp. 288, 289, 295; 2002, p. 75; 2001, p.52; Bruno 2006, p. 125; McNiven, 2004, pp.74, 82). What is Kole science yet to prove that Ailan pipel were in the Torres Strait much longer than the 8,500 year period? When and how did the reciprocal trade relationships with the Papau New Guinean and Australian mainland peoples form? If the Kole scientific theory of the Australian mainland occupation were through Asia and the sahul- land bridge, (Carter, 2006, p. 288; Flood, 1983, p. 31; White and O’Connell, 1982, p. 6) should not the occupation of the Torres
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Strait and mainland Australia occur during the same period but yet to be proved by Kole science? I do not question the origins of Indigenous Australians nor what Kole science is yet to or will never prove, since both Indigenous and Kole knowledge systems and search for knowledge have different paths based on different world-vews (Ermine, 1995, pp. 101, 102). Unlike Kole (Eurocentric) ‘atomistic’ world-views (Ermine , 1995, p. 103 ) and the search for knowledge, I reason that being content with unanswered questions and the knowledge of our ol pipel is an acceptable cultural practice and part of the Ailan culture, the secretive part in which we do not question, inquire, discuss or reveal to outsiders. To question our origin is to: 1) question my Ailan ontology; 2) our Indigenous identity and social connection to ged (land, sea and sky); 3) the stories and knowledge that our ol pipel (elders) passed on to us; 4) the overall integrity of our culture; and 5) the pre-invasion reciprocal trade relationships in the Torres Strait regions and social partnerships with the Australian mainland people which existed centuries before European invasion of Australia. The integrity of our culture is an important consideration in my research because of my cultural focus in the Ailan migration yarn. I reason that without an argument of our cultural integrity I have no foundation for my migration research and in my research I would not be able to use my cultural reference to the Torres Strait homeland, our connection, origin and diversity. Torres Strait diversity is about my overall regional Ailan identity and my local Erubam le and Meriam le connections. In relation to the cultural focus of my migration yarn I reason that connections in diversity reinforce our Ailan socio-cultural relationships in pre and post-invasion Australian society. In relation to our regional identity and diversity the regions of the Torres Strait are composed of the division of three major groups composing the Western Islands, Central Islands, Eastern Islands and subdivisions of these groups. 9.12 Trade The diverse island geography of the Torres Strait meant that the Island nations of the region were totally depended on trade with each other for essential food supplies and other materials. There are documented historical sources and Maps of trade routes throughout the Torres Strait showing inter-island trading movements within the regions of the Torres Strait and trade directions towards the larger continents of Papua New Guinea and mainland Australia (Mulvaney and Kamminga, 1999, pp. 261-264; Valerie, 2002, p. 280). Sharp (1993,
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p. 67) provide an account of how the Meriam people obtained their canoes from New Guinea, the canoes were delivered from the New Guinea coast to Saibai in the Torres Strait where the Meriam people would travel by canoe to picked them up at Saibai. When trading for iron with Europeans, the same strong social principles applied. The traditional trade economy agreements were not written on paper but were established through unbroken social relationships. The picture of Islanders as ‘fierce sea warriors’ (Sharp, 1993, p. 24) describes something very different and it may have been that this is how the delicate pre-invastion trade economy was maintained and their regions stabilised if arguing from the point of maintaining balance in the reciprocal trade relations. The introduced post-invasion Kole economic system in the Torres Strait and documentation of that system did not affect the strong social relations which was part of the traditional Ailan economy. 9.13 Kole paid employment system The Kole paid employment system replaced the traditional Ailan trade, materials and gift exchange system but did not extinguish the traditional Ailan sharing practices if I reason it is justified in the resistence to the passbook account which was one of the reasons for the major 1936 Torres Strait Islander Maritime Strike. Sharp’s (1992, pp. 30, 31) description of the wauri tebud ‘shell friends’ is one account of how unbroken friendship is formed in the social reciprocal trade partnerships throughout the Torres Strait, Papua New Guinea and mainland Australia. Paid employment is an alien Kole system where the priorities of money as reward to a certain extent came to replace the traditional trade reciprocal and exchange social relationships of Ailan pipel. Sharp (1993, p. 174) acknowledged the significance of Ailan cultural reciprocal practice: ‘The tendency of capitalist social relations based on commodity exchange was to dissolve the reciprocal relations of Islander communities’. Nevertheless, the trade exchange and reciprocal responsibilities of Ailan pipel were not lost because it is part of the culture, embedded in the Ailan social world practice and cultural relationship practice of Ailan pasin (Island way) and good pasin (good manners, with the emphasis on sharing). The sharing practice is the socially accepted Ailan cultural etiquette. 9.14 Chapter conclusion My questioning and line of social inquiry in my brief analysis of the pre-invasion Ailan economy and trade is within and from the basis of my Ailan paradigm which I developed for this research inquiring about things I reason that are culturally meaningful to the migration yarn and my research focus (Humphrey, 2001, p. 198). In regards to the yarn in the previous
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paragraphs about the time of human occupation in the Torres Strait, how long would it take to form the pre-invasion reciprocal trade relationships not only within the Torres Strait region but establishing trade partnerships and social connections with the neighbouring Papua New Guinea and mainland Australian cultures? There might be greater awareness and acceptance of Indigenous knowledge and knowledge systems in realtion to Kole (Eurocentric) scientific knowledge systems within the Discipline of archaeology in Australia which Mulvaney and Kamminga (1999, p. 2) identified as belonging to ‘different intellectual tradition, where time and concepts of evidence are so different…’. Mulvaney and Kamminga continue to argue in their discussion that the Australian human occupation period based on Kole archaeological science and Aboriginal oral stories ‘are not necessarily in contradiction…’ (p. 2). If recent archaeological research of the Torres Strait reveals the ‘social complexity’ of preinvasion Torres Strait, can this social complexity reflect the social development of Torres Strait Islander society over a period greater than 8,500 years (Carter, 2006)? Can the complex Ailan social culture based on the figures discussed in this chapter (that developed over a period more than 20 times that of post-invasion Torres Strait) have more influence on the complex Ailan social culture? How much of the Ailan culture is lost since European invasion but equally how much is retained and how much of the oral culture is not and cannot be documented? Although I have limited the use of Kole science because of the reasons I outlined in my thesis, the application of Kole science is still part of my research. For example my yarn in this chapter is about making sense of differences constructively in a combined discussion of both Ailan and Kole world-views. Throughout the chapters of this thesis I made reference to the ‘differences’ in my cultural documentation because the argument is that my research is situated in both the Ailan and Kole cross-cultural space. Aboriginal scholar Karen Martin reinforces my argument pointing out that Western research is not ‘a feature’ of the Indigenous world and therefore the research framework cannot be ‘entirely Aboriginal’justifying my combined discussion (Martin, 2003, p. 13). The overall point is, in this chapter the yarn of pre-invasion Torres Strait recprocipal trade relationships was to reinforce Ailan cultural integrity and an emphasis of its application to Ailan migration
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and the cultural focus of this research which I argue justify’s my brief emphasis to the value of bakir (money) in Chapter Six. Therefore, in a final emphasis in this last chapter of my research thesis I point out that Ailan cultural focus argued from the migration account in the chapters of this thesis that money was not the only reason for finding employment in mainland Australia and that Ailan sociocultural obligations were just as important and the emphasis of this throughout this thesis is justification for an Ailan migration yarn.
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CHAPTER 10 CONCLUSION
10.1 Overall analysis and integration and research conclusions This postgraduate migration research of Torres Strait Islanders whom I referred to in this thesis as Ailan pipel is driven by two general modes of inquiry. The first is the indigenous migration inquiry and the second is a decolonisation inquiry. The research focus and general theme for both modes is the emphasis of Ailan culture and the social practices behind the migration. Emphasising the Ailan culture disputes any claim of assimilation. I reason that if no claim is made in the research to dispute assimilation and the Ailan culture is not emphasised then an unspoken assumption exist that there is no dispute about the effects of colonialism on Ailan pipel and in regards to the chosen research timeframe; associated with the 1960s and 1970s period of the Ailan migration. This indigenous migration inquiry is a research of complex social activities highlighting specific factors affecting indigenous peoples and their culture. This research has revealed complex factors of the Ailan migration account which relates to indigenous migration for example, factors which undermines Ailan culture that restrict and limit our ability to participate to our full potential in Australian society as Indigenous people. The restriction and limitation hides our struggle for Ailan selfdetermination.
My indigenous migration inquiry utilises the Indigenous research methodologies and yarning research method to decolonise the research and provide a way to analyse the effect of colonialism and the struggle for indigenous self-determination through the migration. The research findings are the highlights of Ailan cultural factors in the Ailan migration. These cultural factors were discussed and reinforced by cultural accounts, cultural experiences, cultural connections and the social disadvantage of living with the subtle, direct and indirect forces of assimilations and forces which undermines the Ailan culture in Australian society. The research findings of are these cultural factors and Ailan social practices discussed, highlighted and emphasised throughout the chapters of my thesis. These cultural factors are related to and part of the migration in the same level of importance as the economic Kole reasons documented for the Ailan migration. Decolonising the Ailan migration account of this research places the focus on our Ailan cultural practices and social relations.
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Decolonisation in research is also about a process of liberation from colonialism in the indigenous experience. Indigenous Mi’kmaw scholar Marie Battiste of the Potlotek First Nation, Nova Scotia argues the need for indigenous freedom through decolonization because she reasons it is because of ‘the systemic nature of colonization that creates cognitive imperialism, our cognitive prisons’ (Battiste 2000, p. xvii). Indigenous Saami scholar Jelena Porsanger reinforces Battiste reasons for freedom providing a different reason for indigenous freedom through decolonisation stating that:
This whole [decolonising] process allows indigenous research to break free from the frames of Western epistemologies, which are in most cases very different from the indigenous ones and are, indeed, suited to Western academic thought, but which are nevertheless foreign to indigenous ways of thinking (Porsanger 2004, p. 107).
The decolonisation process allows for the application of the Ailan knowledge system in this research and the use of Indigenous methodologies and yarning research method provided an insight into the complex socio-cultural practice of Ailan pipel behind the migration and of events associated with the migration. Looking at the bigger picture the migration of Torres Strait Islanders is not an isolated local people’s movement because its affect domestically is part of the changing world and global changes (Beckett 1987, p. 12). However isolated human beings and societies were in the past, it all changed rapidly through European expansion and from that expansion came European colonialism, imperialism and cognitive imperialism which the European colonisers imposed on the colonised. In the context of this research the colonised I refer to are the Indigenous peoples of the world who historically had been dispossessed of their traditional territories and subjected to colonial rule and control.
The European colonist introduced a centralised global capitalist economy and core capitalist economies which the colonised innovatively became part of. In her article titled: ‘Migration, migrant workers and capitalism’ Jane Hardy summarised the negative influence of capitalism affecting migration claiming that the:
uneven nature of capitalism that produces a constant tendency towards labour mobility, with pull factors in expanding parts of the system and push factors where the landscape and workplaces of the system have been decimated (Hardy, 2009, p. 7).
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In the Torres Strait with the collapse of the pearling industry in the 1960s some of the Ailan pearling boats (Beckett, 2004, p.10; Sharp 1993, p. 227) were still operating, so the Ailan Councils acted in the interest of maintaining skilled Ailan workers in the Torres Strait for the pearling boats, the Councils worked with the government to restrict the emigration of Ailan workers but eventually lifted the restriction (Watkin, 2009, p. 57). My research was not to emphasis the labour mobility of Ailan men in the 1960s and 1970s because by doing so it would shift the focus away from the socio-cultural aspect of an indigenous migration. The emphasis then would be on the labour source and not on the responsibility to family and community which could only be emphasised if the focus was on elaboration of the Ailan culture. For example the emphasis to the cultural family and community responsibilities of the Ailan migrant workers sending money back to their families in the Torres Strait homeland, fulfilling their extended family cultural obligations.
World events associated and affected by the capitalist economy were for example, the human slave trade, World Wars One and Two, independence and the decolonisation of colonised countries and migration. The migration of Ailan pipel reflects the global movement and changes briefly described in this and the previous paragraph. The Ailan migration however belongs to the sub-category migration study of indigenous migration which contains matters of Indigenous culture affecting the migrant status that is not fully addressed by the governments of the new country. Indigenous migrants are faced with issues affecting indigenous peoples such as marginalisation in mainstream society issue relating to indigenous identity, struggle for the rights to self-determination, social justice issues and the research and research process which restrict the use of indigenous knowledge. The Ailan immigrant status is not fully recognised in policy although the policy for the definition of a refugee in Australia is. One of the issues of indigenous migration highlighted in this thesis is the limited research of the immigrant status.
Research was used as a tool by the colonisers to justify: 1) the dispossession of indigenous territories; 2) the control of indigenous societies; and 3) the implementation of the colonist’s protection and assimilation policies. In reference to Torres Strait Islanders, one of the main purpose for the 1898 Torres Strait Islander research by Cambridge Anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon and his team was to record as much of the remaining traditional customs of Ailan pipel before the culture would be extinct according to Haddon’s concern (Fitzpatrick, 1990, p. 337; Sharp 1993, p. viii). It seems that ‘in 1876 the missionary Samuel McFarlane 132
held similar views as Haddon ‘expressing a commonly held Victorian notion about degenerated societies…’, ‘…the inhabitants of Torres Strait were ‘the miserable remnant of a worn out race’ (Mullins, 1994, p. 10). Haddon’s 1898 anthropological six volume report of the Torres Strait Islander research is a valuable source of past Ailan cultural practices and information from his report was used in the Mabo Case (Beckett, 2004, p. 5). The negative aspect of Haddon’s report of Ailan pipel however was in his main objective of not focusing on continuity which has been addressed in my research. For example Sharp (1993, p. viii) emphasised the comments of Dr. Hironobu Kitaoji’s that Haddon and his team ‘had underestimated ‘the unity, cohesiveness and integrity of the Torres Strait Islanders and their culture’, and that such thinking had persisted in Beckett's work (1978, 55).’
The concern I addressed in my research is not just in what the research of Ailan pipel are saying but equally in the unspoken and what the research is not saying. In the current argument regarding the negative implications of research and its negative impact on Indigenous peoples 20 if no claim is made in clarifying the indigenous position in research Houston emphasises the negative consequences of research which does not represent the local indigenous interest would remain undisputed. As Houston (2007, p. 45) contended:
[h]istorically, research produced knowledge about Indigenous peoples, it shaped popular perceptions of them, fed racist ideologies and stereotypes and created distorted images that were fed back to Indigenous people defining for them who they were and what attributes they should possess in order to be Indigenous (Smith, 1999, pp. 1-3). In short, research corrupted perceptions of the Indigenous Other.
Torres Strait Islander Maluilgal man Dr. Martin Nakata provides another example of the historical distortion of Torres Strait Islanders in his critique of the 1898 Torres Strait Islanders Anthropological Report of A.C. Haddon and his Cambridge team. Nakata (1998) reasoned:
that, in forming knowledges on Islanders, he [Haddon] did so in a process that suspended them from both the political and historical context in which they lived and thought. That in
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‘The word itself, ‘research’, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary (Smith, 1999, p. 1).
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this process he instituted ways for understanding Islanders that inscribed them into the order of a knowledge system that was quite discontinuous with their own.
In highlighting the negative aspect of Haddon’s report Nakata reinforced the need for clarity and for highlighting the value of Ailan culture and how Ailan pipel benefit from its practice in Australian society. It took me half of my life and the struggles in my tertiary education journey to recognise the benefits of my practicing Ailan culture for me and my people in our Torres Strait homeland and migrant urban communities in the mainland. The overall analysis of my Ailan migration research is an emancipatory account influencing the research and its conclusions in the current field of migration research that can only be beneficial to Ailan society.
Research into Torres Strait Islander socio-cultural activities is much needed to allow for a shift in focus from the generalization of ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ combined studies. While these studies are beneficial to both Ailan and Aboriginal peoples it does not provide an account of the diverse cultural practices and local community needs of both Australian Indigenous groups. By covering the Ailan migration I concentrated on the cultural factors relating to indigenous migration study that was significant to our Ailan social practice in the Ailan and Kole cross-cultural space.
The application of the decolonization process highlighted the Ailan cultural practices including the justification for Ailan cultural baggages. Otherwise we participate in Australian society with fear of offending and expressing ourselves as Islanders and not utalising our culture through our cultural lens to benefit ourselves and at the same time empower the broader community. Our overall Indigenous cultural intension have never been to function separately from the broader Australian community but to be part of it but still maintain our local unique identity and not be subject to the Kole assimilation forces including forces which undermine our Ailan culture and identity.
Most policies for Torres Strait Islander people addressing Torres Strait Islander issue(s) also address the cultural factors of Torres Strait Islander behavior. My research have emphasise Ailan culture in its appropriate social context and therefore, can be used as a guide for specific Ailan cultural matters since the contents of this Ailan migration accounts are based on memories and experiences affecting the local Indigenous community. For instance the 134
account of my education journey I began in the Torres Strait and my school years on mainland Australia and also my academic activity using the examples of my struggle provides a valuable source for policies makers. The Ailan migration study covers the interconnected and interrelationship of Ailan socio-cultural relationship and because of the social relationship connections the thesis provides background cultural information for employment, health, education and housing. For example my account of living in the homes of my other Mums and Dads, in considering this family cultural practice policy makers and economist might be more aware that the figures of adults in a household are possible figures of the extended family or a family members that was accommodated for the night or days or weeks and was recorded as a family member in the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) census.
After explaining the benefits of my research I will now highlight the contribution of my research. To do this I will need to provide a background of the cultural practices in local Indigenous communities and in the wider Australian and international societies. In light of the increased awareness of Torres Strait Islanders their culture and society and achievements through the event of the 2008 Apology, and in sports, arts, music, movies, cultural activities such as Indigenous dancing, National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) week celebrations, Torres Strait Islander information in Higher School Certificate (HSC) education papers, Torres Strait Islander courses at TAFE and university, Torres Strait Islander teaching resources and information on internets sites, the research of Torres Strait Islanders by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and author and lastly the impact of the Mabo Case and its importance to Indigenous peoples. Amidst this background the overall significance and contribution of this thesis is the contribution of its cultural contents to Torres Strait Islander education for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students and the Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities domestically and internationally, finally my contribution to Torres Strait Islanders my pamle. The thesis is written in a cultural format that they will be comfortable with. It contains accounts of events that are part of every Torres Strait Islanders life. This thesis belongs to Ailan pipel as I indicated in my thesis dedication. The strengths and limitations of my research will be discussed in the below paragraphs.
10.2 Methodological Limitations Colonisation was a violent period for the colonised people who was dispossessed of their lands and removed from their traditional lands and relocated to other parts of the country. 135
Because I was studying the effects of colonisation I was not able to find much information about the violent history of the pearl-shelling industry in the Torres Strait. Most of the secondary sources of Torres Strait history I found provided only a brief mention of the violence and criminal activities against Ailan pipel but not enough detail about how Ailan pipel and society were affected. I found one source but it was an internet source and not suitable for my postgraduate study.
The limited timeframe of my postgraduate study did not allow me time to research primary archival sources of the violence toward the Torres Strait Islander people during the pearlshelling industry which some secondary sources I found briefly mentioned were the most violent period in the history of the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait. They could not defend themselves against firearms and the missionaries had Christianised the island communities so that the whole community could not defend themselves in the way they did before European invasion. Documenting the violence will focus on the community and highlight the effect of colonisation because in most research the community is left out. As Mosby (2013, pp. 2, 3) reasoned ‘[e]xisting migration studies tend to focus on the history and extent of mobility rather than seeking a deeper understanding from displaced people’s perspectives.’ Therefore the social and cultural aspect is left out and not fully emphasised.
The limited timeframe also prevented analysis of the secondary sources regarding the documented cultural practices of Torres Strait Islanders. Only a few was mentioned in the literature review and the limited analysis in the topic discussions of the chapters. Otherwise the study is not as in-depth as it could be.
The topic of researching Ailan culture is limited compared to the culture research of mainland Aboriginal people. I provided a reason for this in the paragraphs of this conclusion chapter for example the lateness of archaeological research in the Torres Strait and the bias of historical studies which result in incomplete studies and does not document the diversity in Torres Strait culture. For example most researchers researching Torres Strait Islanders use the 1898 study of Torres Strait Islanders by Cambridge Anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon and his team even though Haddon’s research of Torres Strait Islanders is incomplete because he did not include the Kulkalgal (Central Island group) communities of the Torres Strait in his 1898 anthropological study (Shnukal, 2004, p. 318). Researchers using Haddon’s source for their Torres Strait research might not document an outcome that is representative of all the 136
Indigenous people of the Torres Strait including the Kaurareg Aboriginal people. The researchers will need additional sources besides Haddon’s report to include information on the Kulkalgal and the Kaurareg Aboriginal people whose traditional territories are the Kaiwalagal group of islands. Sources on the Kulkalgal and Kaiwalagal include Dr. Maureen Fuary (1991) doctorate thesis titled ‘In so many words: an ethnography of life and identity on Yam Island, Torres Strait’ of the Kulkalgal and of Kaiwalagal information of the Kaurareg Aboriginal people in Nonie Sharp’s (1992, pp. 105-135) book titled ‘Footprints along the Cape York sandbeaches’, in Southon (2014) ‘The Sea of Waubin: the Kaurareg and their marine environment’ and other sources.
10.3 Limitations of the Researcher The discussion in this paragraph is from an outsider view and line of questioning. Because the research uses the yarning method researcher bias becomes an issue. The researcher is also a member of the Eastern Islander Torres Strait community which constitutes bias in favouring family members. However, the limitations of the research and limited secondary sources of Torres Strait Islanders and Ailan migration studies does not allow for too many representations hence the choice of family members and also because the migration story is my account. The bias presented a research outcome from an Eastern Islander perspective. Future research on the topic nevertheless might present a more balanced view if the research intent is to capture the whole Torres Strait Islander community with an emphasis on diversity.
10.4 Limitations of the Research The topic area of my indigenous migration research is relatively new and as discussed in Chapter Three very little research has been conducted with a primary focus on Torres Strait Islander culture and social behavior. With the limitations mentioned above this study has provided the foundation and has laid the groundwork for a more complete research in the future.
10.5 Strength of Research The strength of this research is the Ailan research methodologies yarning method including being written from an Indigenous perspective which I reason will produce an outcome that is beneficial to Ailan society. There are some elements in the research which are both strengths and weaknesses. For example, the use of Ailan concepts and terminologies and the messy texts in which readers might find hard to read. The local Indigenous reader on the other hand 137
might find it easy to read because he or she will relate to the Ailan cultural concepts and terminologies. 10.6 Applications for research findings My research is a contribution to the wider body of local, national and international migration studies including research of indigenous society and knowledge, belonging to: 1) indigenous cultural knowledge and philosophies; 2) representation of indigenous voices; 3) voices of the colonised, self-determination and decolonisation; indigenous migration; and 5) anti-colonial discourse and resistance.
This research belongs to a limited field of study and therefore my contribution is valuable to Indigenous research by Indigenous researchers as discussed in Chapter Two. Interdisciplinary sources were used in this research by the Indigenous Ailan researcher and using an Indigenous research framework and storytelling method bringing together the socio-cultural practice of Ailan pipel with the focus on the community rather than just the documented events from the result of colonisation.
I would like to expand further by discussing two applications for my research findings. The first is in researching Torres Strait Islanders and using Indigenous research methodologies and the yarning method that allowed for the use of Torres Strait Islander knowledge, values and beliefs in my study also allowing the incorporation of Torres Strait Islander research paradigm and Indigenous research protocols and application of the decolonization process. The second application is its use towards clarifying the pre-invasion relationship between the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait and the mainland Aboriginal peoples which would contribute towards understanding the effect of cultural factors in the sub-category study of indigenous migration.
One of my concerns which I discussed in Chapter Three was in finding a research method(ology) that would allow me to bring out the Ailan cultural factors behind the Torres Strait Islander migration which was the focus of my research. Using the Indigenous research methodologies and yarning method was suitable because it allowed me to use a research method that was appropriate for researching the local Indigenous Ailan society. Prosanger (2004, p.10) describes my concerns and justifies the use of Indigenous methodologies and method claiming that:
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[t]he Alaskan Yupiaq scholars, George P. Charles Kanaqluk and Oscar Kawagley, have shown in their studies that “theoretical”, “ready-to-use” methods must be re-considered and re-worked in indigenous research, and that the researcher should not start from a theoretical point, but rather from that of the indigenous ethical protocols, in order to develop methods that will suit the local culture (Kawagley 1995; Kanaqluk 2001).
As I discussed in Chapter Three, I followed the Indigenous research protocols as suggested in the above quote by Prosanger. I included in my Ailan research framework strategies to ensure my yarning research method is appropriate for my research, even strategies such as the use of Ailan terminologies and cultural approach to suit the local Torres Strait Islander culture to produce a result and outcome that is favourable to Torres Strait Islanders.
10.7 Future research directions I would like to discuss whether further research can be conducted from the general topic of my postgraduate research. The topic of my research can be broken down into two general categories for research the first is Ailan culture and society and second migration. The research of Torres Strait Islanders has been delayed due to lack of interest in other fields of study such as in archaeological research. One of the reasons was the geographical location of the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait. Historically research interests were focused on the two mainland cultures in Papua New Guinea to the north of the Torres Strait and south to mainland Australia and not on the Indigenous Torres Strait society in the middle (Carter 2006, p. 287).
Alfred Cort Haddon and his Cambridge Anthropological team conducted research of Ailan pipel in 1898 and he published six volumes of his report (Burke 2011, p. 37). His information is used in most studies of the Torres Strait Islander people and society (Carter 2006, p. 287). Since then Torres Strait became a popular research destination. The researchers and authors of Torres Strait literature are too many to include in my thesis Bibliography. Anna Shnukal (2003) compiled a ‘Bibliography of Torres Strait’ which has a list of 1500 entries. I will however provide a short list of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors and researchers that I used in my thesis for the Ailan migration research which are listed in my Bibliography and they include: Beckett (1958); Fisk et al. (1974); John Singe (1979); Beckett (1989); Nonie Sharp (1993); Alan Williamson (1994); Steve Mullins (1994); Shnukal
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(1988); Beckett (2001); Loos and Mabo (1996); Martin Nakata (1998, 1995, 2002, 2007); Carter (2006); Watkin (2009); George H. Pitt (2005); Maureen Fuary (1991); Eillie Gaffney (1989); David Lawrence (1990); Monica Mulrennan and Colin Scott (2001); and Vinnitta Patricia Mosby (2013).
Further research can be done on my research topic on the subject of Ailan culture because besides the present researched situation of Ailan pipel new discoveries in the Torres Strait of past Ailan social complexities means that it will bring changes to what is currently known in the dynamics of Ailan culture, people and their society. The recent archaeological interest in the Torres Strait has revealed new insight into past Ailan cultural social practices which I have emphasised in the post-invasion cultural experiences of the Ailan migration account. In her article titled ‘North of the Cape and South of the Fly: Discovering the Archaeology of Social Complexity in Torres Strait’ Melissa Carter (2006, p. 288) commented on the new changes and its impact in Australian Indigenous studies claiming that it demonstrates that:
[…] the changing nature of the intent and outcomes of research, which include a shift from a focus on ecological aspects of human antiquity and subsistence to a recognition of how the archaeology informs on the social complexities and dynamics involved in human settlement, economic development and trade and exchange systems. This recent advance in interpreting the archaeology of Torres Strait both reflects the lateness of investigation in the region and, more importantly, lays testimony to the influence of Lourandos’ contributions on the social archaeology of Indigenous societies, and of its greater impact on Australian archaeological practice (Lourandos 1977b, 1980b, 1983b).
The focus of my research is on Ailan culture and the migration account provided the documented social setting of an Ailan cultural post-invasion experience. Highlighting the Ailan culture through the cultural experiences and the Ailan voice would provide a research base that would guide new discoveries such as the latest archaeological studies in the Torres Strait that would be beneficial to Ailan pipel and their society. The new changes to Ailan cultural research is the emphasis of the Ailan voice due to greater participation of Torres Strait Islander scholars and researchers in the study of Torres Strait Islander people and society. The addition of Torres Strait Islander scholars and researchers in combination with the expertise of non-Indigenous researchers in Torres Strait Islander research will contribute a
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much greater understanding of the Indigenous peoples of the Torres Strait and their relationships with our mainland Australian Aboriginal country men.
The second part of my topic which I mentioned is in regards to migration and the Ailan migrant experience. Further research can be done on my research topic of the Ailan migrant experience because issues highlighted through indigenous migration that is applicable to the internal Ailan migration in Australian society. As Watkin argued there is no policy in Australian society which defines the Ailan migrant status (Watkin, 2009, p. 6). More research on the Torres Strait Islander diaspora is needed combining Australian internal migration statistical people mobility research with social migration research such as in this postgraduate research.
I further emphasise on the importance of research in the migration situation of Ailan pipel by reflecting on Carlos Yescas Angeles Trujano’s concern in regards to ‘the very limited participation of indigenous scholars on the effects of migration in their communities’ (Trujano 2008, p. 13). Issues relating to indigenous migration study such as policies affecting those indigenous immigrants resettled outside of their traditional territories, indigenous identity and rights to exercise self-determination will need to be appropriately addressed by the nation-state through policies. Until that is achieved migration research of their local community by indigenous researchers will be a valuable contribution and highlights the need for researchers researching the effects of migration in their own communities. In the situation of Ailan pipel their future as immigrants could be affected by the movement for autonomy in the Torres Strait homeland other issues include the Ailan identity issues in regards to the status for the generations of Torres Strait Islanders born on the mainland and outside of their traditional territory and the discussion of maintaining our connection to our Torres Strait homeland. This was a common issue which had been highlighted in this Ailan migration study by myself and other Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers. I would like to conclude my discussion in these paragraphs as to whether further research can be done on my research topic with a culturally appropriate answer using my Ailan philosophical reasoning by ending my research journey philosophically with the concept of the journey of my sap lubabat.
I describe my research in a philosophical way by using the concept of my sap lubabat. The journey of the sap has no end which speaks of the nature of research, knowledge creation and 141
the research topic of Ailan migration. My research belongs to the indigenous migration study and a wider body of migration research and body of knowledge in which I reason that some future researcher will add to by building on its strengths and weaknesses.
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APPENDIX
Appendix 1 Screenshot copy of Copyright permission for Torres Strait Map
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