Climate justice for the Torres Strait

CLIMATE JUSTICE FOR THE TORRES STRAIT

INTERVIEW BY GABRIELLE DUNLEVY

YESSIE MOSBY

Yessie Mosby is a traditional owner of Masig Island who moved back there 10 years ago after living in the western islands of the Torres Strait. He was shocked by the changes he found on the island and has continued to witness in the decade since.

I’m 38 years old. I’ve lived all my life on the western Torres Strait but came back here often for family gatherings. I moved back to Masig Island 10 years ago and have lived here ever since. I’ve got a lovely wife and seven kids, I’m so blessed.

What I’ve seen change since my childhood is the impact of erosion, the impact on the food source, and on our drinking water. Most of our wells have turned brackish. Sweet potatoes are not how they used to be, which makes living in the community a bit harder, especially when you come from a big family. We rely now on the local shop to buy potatoes and taro, because the soil isn’t producing the bulk of our foods. When the rain season is expected to come in a particular month, it doesn’t come, and our crop dies.

It’s had a giant effect. When we hose our garden using the well water, it contaminates the garden soil because it’s so brackish. We are relying heavily on rainwater tanks now. Our town water is desal (desalinated) saltwater turned into fresh water, and our bodies are still trying to get used to it. We still get very ill from it. Climate change affects our health, it affects us physically and mentally.

How has climate change affected people’s livelihoods?

You have to work twice as hard as before to survive. People now are relying more heavily now on payments from the government to buy food. This affects people with a higher cost of living. Since the price of oil has started to rise, the freight price has started to rise as well. To give you an example of prices at the local shop, a loaf of frozen bread costs A$5.

We mainly fish, but we have to go out farther now to collect fish. It’s dangerous for the younger ones who don’t have much experience. Our main income here comes from crayfish, so regardless of the weather people still go out. When they get a good catch, it’s still not enough and they have to split the money between the divers.

You returned to live on Masig Island 10 years ago. What were the biggest changes you noticed?

I was shocked. I’ve lived in the Torres Strait my whole life. I’ve never lived on mainland Australia. I get ‘land sick’, I have to come back and smell the saltwater. Where I grew up, it’s a hilly island, and I’ve seen the impact of erosion and climate change there, but coming back home to a coral cay island, it was worse.

I lost two of my grandfathers’ land boundary trees. When I was young, I stood under one of the trees eating almonds, it was a bush almond tree. When I came back it was gone, just a stump. I witnessed my other grandfathers’ land boundary tree collapse into the water, that happened before my eyes. I’ve seen my two great-grand grandmother’s remains get brought up by inundation. I’ve seen one of their skulls get smashed by driftwood. It’s something not good to witness, especially if you have ties to that loved one. It’s something that really affects us mentally.

Being a cultural person, growing up with very strong beliefs, we have very strict cultural protocols and taboos that I don’t want to offend. This is something totally new to us, and a very scary thing to see throughout the last 10 years.

Storm surge destroying infrastructure on Masig Island (March 2019). Photo: Sophie Marjanac

On the video call, Yessie shows me the area where his great-great grandfather’s two wives are buried. The coconut grove where the graves are located was once inland but is now just steps from the beach. There is driftwood showing where the inundation reached. He also points out a well that was once inland but is now just metres from the shore.

Yessie explains that an application to fund an expert to help relocate the graves to a safer area was not successful. The federal government has announced A$25 million for Torres Strait infrastructure, but Yessie believes it’s unlikely to be enough for the whole region.

It’s very hard because nobody knows us. Australia doesn’t know about Masig. Trying to get the word out there is tough as hell. We had a handful of Australians who turned and looked, but it was like a cloud passing over us, or over them. Nobody can hear our cry, nobody can see what we’re facing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison declined an invitation to visit the Torres Strait. Yessie hopes that taking the case to the UN will put the story on the world stage.

The Australian government is not listening to us, we want to go higher. We don’t want to deal with a middleman anymore. We are taxpayers but our cry is not being heard, not being dealt with, so we made this move to go higher and Sophie (Sophie Marjanac from ClientEarth) agreed to help us.

We hope the outcome will be to recognise our suffering, slow down the burning of fossil fuels and emissions. We want the world to realise that … our lives matter, like everybody else’s. The main thing is we really don’t want to be refugees in our own country.

I’ll be an elder at that time and it will be my children’s time when they have to make a big move. If that was to happen, I would probably tell my kids to go and I would remain. I have a big duty to my late father. Their responsibility was to look after the Country and ancestral remains. This bad thing happened to my grandparents on my shift. I didn’t play my cards right in looking after my grandparent’s remains. I put blame on myself when it’s not me to be blamed, but the world, with the burning of fossil fuels.

The majority of Torres Strait Islanders, 20,000 to 40,000, are now living on the mainland and there’s only 10,000 of us living back on Country. We are our families’ strongest link back to Country. If we move, there will be no link back to Country. We will be like helium balloons with strings tied to nothing. We will have our belief, but it will turn into folklore. We cannot attach onto another Indigenous place and call it home. If they move us down to mainland Australia, it’s not our land, it’s not our Country, God didn’t place us there.

We don’t want to stay on a land where for the rest of our entire lives we have to give acknowledgement back to traditional owners and leave us with no recognition as one of Australia’s two Indigenous peoples. We try not to think about that. But mentally it does affect us here on Masig, and I know for a fact it affects the whole Torres Strait.

Yessie is planning to sail down the east coast of Australia from Masig Island to Sydney in traditional voyaging canoes to bring awareness to the issue of climate change.

If the government won’t come to us, we will come down to see them. We won’t be jumping in planes to make this voyage, we will be jumping in our ancient canoes and travelling down. I feel that once social media gets hold of that move, the whole world will be tuned into us. It could be a way to get the world’s attention.

What will be your message for the world?

We really want the world to know there’s people here called Masig people who exist. We are Torres Strait Islanders, we come from a tribe called Kulkalgal and a clan called Gudumadh and I come from a family called Mosby and I have seven kids. There’s human beings living in this part of the continent who are getting caught. I really want the world to know we are suffering; we really need help.

Thanks to Sophie Marjanac and Lisa Viliamu Jameson for facilitating this interview.