My Great-Grandmother, Aka Kailang by Chantay Turner

My Great-Grandmother, Aka Kailang

Chantay Turner | Year 10

I am interviewing my grandmother, Aka Regina (Gina), about my great-grandmother, Aka Kailang. Aka Regina was Aka Kailing’s seventh child and last daughter. Aka Kailang was my great-grandmother (my grandmother Regina’s mother). I met her and Aka Kailang carried me when I was born in 2006 and we stayed on Hammond Island. She used to sing to me ‘Au Chante Ma Belle’, which means to sing my beautiful. Aka Kailang Ruth Dorante (nee Ware) was a proud Wagadagam woman originally from Mabuiag (Mabuyag) Island. In 1960 on her 20th birthday, Aka Kailang married Athe Bertram (Buster) on Hammond Island. They met on one of Aka Kailang’s trips to Hammond Island to play basketball with her friends.

Q. What was Aka Kailang’s background?

A. Aka Kailang’s ancestral line stemmed from the Wagadagam tribe from Mabuiag Island in the Torres Straits. Mabuiag Island is exactly 69.6 kilometres from Thursday Island when travelling by boat. Her parents were Aka Magina (nee Marou, Mer Island) and Athe Cook Ware (Mabuyag Island). Aka Kailang was raised on St Paul’s Village, Moa Island, as a child, then her family relocated to Thursday Island. Her siblings are Marie (Nina), Nancy (Pudi), and only brother, Ray (One Boy), Dorothy (Genie), Angela (Pathai), Kailang, Lillias, Stella (island adoption to Namok family).

Q. What do you think Aka Kailang is most remembered/known for?

A. Aka Kailang was known and remembered for her support of women and children in helping to prevent them from suffering domestic violence and sexual assault. She was herself a victim of domestic violence. She passed away in 2007, but today people in the community still talk about Aka Kailang. She was a very strong, influential woman. She influenced all women and girls. Aka Gina, her daughter, admired her advocacy for women and children’s rights. Today, Aka Gina is the elected Mura Kosker Sorority Inc. President, an all-women sisters’ organisation, a position she has held since 2011. Aka Gina wants to continue Aka Kailang’s legacy.

Q. What do you think about Aka Kailang’s hopes and dreams for the future?

A. Aka Kailang’s hopes and dreams for the future were keeping families strong by empowering women and girls. She wanted to start a family business and support her husband in building a Torres Strait freight line company. Her husband was renowned for being a well-seasoned skipper, taking cargo and goods to the outer islands in the Torres Strait. She supported his adult learning at TAFE and made sure he got his Master Class Skipper qualifications. She knew what she wanted. She wanted her children to be educated, strong, independent and speak up for their rights and to help others. She wanted women and children to be safe in their homes and community. She also made sure that her children were educated and had the best start in life. She was a bookworm and loved reading books. Two of her daughters have been elected as community councillors: Aka Margie at Dauan, and Aka Nancy at Hammond Island.

Q. What inspired Aka Kailang to help women suffering domestic violence in the community?

A. She was a victim of domestic violence and she wanted to help other women suffering in silence. She worked with other strong community women who also wanted to talk about family and domestic violence, educating families to be aware and stop the violence. ‘Walk away, cool down’, ‘Break the cycle’, ‘DV is not our culture’ – these where some of the themes they would use to promote the prevention of family and domestic violence. The men were worried about the women’s movement in the Torres Straits community. Along with her co-workers, she visited every community in the Torres Strait to talk about domestic violence and people would say she was very passionate and determined, but her bark was worse than her bite.

Q. What did culture mean to Aka Kailang?

A. Aka Kailang wasn’t a very traditional language speaker, but she could understand what people were saying. She believed domestic violence was not our culture. In the past, men and women had always respected each other and worked together. When the Torres Strait was settled with arrival of white men and women, our traditional and cultural lifestyles and our lore (law) were forever changed. She believed in the culture and kinship. She corrected an elected chairman at a community meeting, saying she was his Aunty and demanded respect. This former chairman on Mabuiag shared this story with Aka Gina last year, and that’s how he remembered meeting Aka Kailang for the first time.

Q. What challenges did Aka Kailang have to overcome? How did she overcome these particular challenges throughout her life?

A. When Aka Kailang was involved with the women’s movement in the mid-1980s, a collective of strong women gathered, then the first women’s organisation was born – Mura Kosker Sorority Inc. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) funding body, which is now decommissioned, had funded the woman’s organisation. ATSIC was led by a board of men. The men were afraid to tell her about the funding cuts. They were worried and debated who would tell Aka Kailang about the funding shortage. She would always fight for women’s rights and questioned why. Living on Hammond Island, which was her husband’s community, she was treated as an outsider, but she raised above any community and family negativity. She would hold rounders (softball) games with her sisters, start sewing classes for women, bring women’s meetings to Hammond Island and organise community events such as Christmas celebrations and discos for children at the community hall.

Q. What was Aka Kailang’s childhood like?

A. Aka Kailang was raised at St Paul’s and eventually she and her family moved to Thursday Island when she was older. Her father, Great-Grandfather Athe Cookie, was a baker. She used to talk about her mother Aka Magina, a traditional bush medicine woman, mid-wife, and healer. Aka Kailang then attended school at St Anne’s in Townsville. When she finished school, she helped her parents and her siblings through financial and moral support. She met Athe Buster, my grandfather, Aka Gina’s dad, when she went to Hammond Island to teach the women to play basketball in the 1960s.

Q. What was Aka Kailang’s favourite memory growing up and living in the community?

A. She would often fondly talk about growing up at the Ware Corner at St Paul’s. Her sisters and cousins’ sisters had a special song about them growing up. She used to talk a lot about swimming at Boo Boo Creek as a child, fishing and food gathering, also doing household chores and collecting firewood. She was an independent woman, especially when Athe Buster was out on the boat. She had to feed her children and make ends meet. She did this by gathering firewood for the Catholic Church to make money while he was away. She would yarn about how they had to row a boat from Hammond Island to Thursday Island, following the tides to help them cross the channel easier. There were no powered boats in those days.

Q. What motivated Aka Kailang in life?

A. Aka Kailang was motivated by her family (her sisters, her husband, and children). She was educated and that’s how she knew ‘education is the key’ to make a positive change, create opportunity and give back to the community.

Q. How was Aka Kailang inspiring to Aka Gina and me?

Chantay: Aka Kailang inspired me because she fought for the rights of women and girls, who were going through family violence and child abuse. She contributed to the community by working for the Torres Shire Council, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Aboriginal Hostels, also known as Jumula Dubbins, and she was also part of a movement to create the Mura Kosker Sorority, which is the leading Torres Strait women’s group that would much later set up the shelter called Lena Passi Women’s Shelter, Star of the Sea Aged Care Home and other community organisations. She also won the centenary medal for her distinguished service for helping victims such as females who were experiencing family violence and child abuse in the Torres Straits and NPA (North Peninsula Area). She was a very successful woman and I want to be just as successful as her and also give back to my wonderful community and the next generation. Her favourite saying was that ‘women can do anything’ and she was also a very inspirational woman to the community.