It's been a long time since I've been to this island, Thunada.
But it's the same feeling I've got inside of me.
The same feel as I felt before when I first come here.
I only speak for my clan group - my tribal group.
The Ankamuthi people.
When coming onto the island, the woman would stay in the camp - the safer area like the
beach.
They'd go collecting shells, prepare the fire, get the food ready while the men would go
out further into the sea to get turtle, fish, stingray.
I'm from the Ankamuthi clan group.
The gathering of foods is the most important thing you know.
People, families, go out.
The ladies do their part of gathering.
The men probably go out hunting
in the reefs.
Just look, I'm finding one of our shells.
Silel we call it, silel.
We boil this.
This is how we look for the shells.
We can use the anthill like an earth oven.
To cook stuff in it.
Make a hole here.
Dig him up inside.
Just make him nice and clean.
They light a fire or put hot rocks or something inside.
Then they put food.
They use him as an earth oven.
They can cook food inside as well.
So when it's ripe it gets like this and it bursts open.
Just rub that off, take all that rough bit out, and you eat the inside of it.
There's a peanut inside this hard flesh here.
The bush peanut, in our language, we call it utang.
Growing up, we were not allowed to speak our own language.
Even my Dad, even in their time, you know.
Our Uncles, Aunties, and all of our Grandparents, when colonisation happened, they had to speak
English.
And if they got caught talking their language to each other in class they get reported to
the teacher and they get flogged afterwards.
This seaweed like this but in the water when it's fresh all this round bit we use.
We get it from the seaweed when it's green and it's still good and we crack it in the
mouth of our little ones to help them speak words sentences properly.
Like they'll say must put that seaweed in the child's mouth to make them speak clear
and learn the words so they won't stutter or anything but they'll speak properly.
And see that noise?
We pop that into the child's mouth.
We do we pop it in their mouth to speak clear.
It's good to come back to this island again and talk about it you know because things
like this we don't talk about it as often, you know.
Since our old people gone.
There's just what memory's left from what they told us.
That's all we got there.
We stand today strong, I stand here as an Ankamuthi speaking person, my language.
And as an Ankamuthi untaamu, Ankamuthi woman.
So that's who I am and that's my identity I pass onto my children.
And that's most important for all of us to maintain that because that's who we are.