Growing Up Torres Strait Islander in Australia

Dr Jackie Huggins AM FAHA, a member of the Bidjara and Birri Gubba Juru peoples, is currently leading the work for Treaty/Treaties in Queensland. In popular demand as a speaker on Aboriginal issues, she is a well-known historian and author, with articles published widely in Australia and internationally. Her acclaimed biography of her mother, Auntie Rita, was published in 1994 and in 2022 her biography of her father, Jack of Hearts: QX11594 was published.

She was the former Co-Chair National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, former member of the National Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Co-Chair Reconciliation Australia, the State Library Board of Queensland and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. She was Co-Commissioner for Queensland for the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, and for several years was a Judge of the annual David Unaipon Award.

Samantha Faulkner is a Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal woman, (Badu and Moa Islands, Torres Strait and Yadhaigana and Wuthathi peoples, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland). Her poetry and short stories have been published nationally and internationally. She is the proud author of Life Blong Ali Drummond: A Life in the Torres Strait, (2007) and editor of Pamle: Torres Strait Islanders in Canberra (2018). She also is a member of the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Network, MARION (ACT Writers) and treasurer, First Nations Australia Writers Network and Us Mob Writing Group. In 2023, she was the inaugural Torres Strait Islander curator for the Brisbane Writers Festival. 

Jillian is a Samsep and Zagareb woman of Erub and Mer. Born and raised on Waiben, Zenadth Kes (Thursday Island, Torres Strait). Jillian’s heritage stems back to New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, and Ayreshire, Scotland.

Jillian attended Thursday Island State High School in the 80’s where she discovered her love for creative writing. It wasn’t until 2012 that she decided to start writing professionally.

Jillian’s first book Bakir and Bi was a winner at the 2012 Black&write! Fellowship competition with State Library Queensland. Bakir and Bi achieved international acclaim when it was chosen for the White Raven’s Catalogue produced by the International Youth Library in Germany. Published by Magabala Books in Broome, WA, Bakir and Bi went on to be displayed at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy, 2014.

In March 2021, Jillian published the sequel to Bakir and Bi, Bid Buai (Dolphin People) with Balboa Press, a self-publishing arm of Hay House.

Jillian’s insights and narratives of all that pertains to life is expressed through her moving poetry, that breathes from a deep place of self-discovery. Her poetry come highly commended by Judges of the 2018 Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize, published in Overland Journal Magazine October 2018, and Borderless Transnational Feminist Australian Anthology.

A wife, mother, grandmother, mentor, and businesswoman, Jillian commits her craft and experiences to invest into empowering First Nation peoples of Australia.

Lenora Thaker is a proud Torres Strait Islander woman (Erub-le and Mabuiag-le), born and raised on Gimuy Walubarra Yidinji and Yirrganydji country in far north Queensland. In 2021 she became the first Torres Strait Islander to win the Writing NSW Boundless Indigenous Writer’s Mentorship. She is a descendant of the Torres Strait Islanders of Cairns Malaytown (a makeshift village cobbled around swampland, late 1800s to early 1950s), who are the inspiration for her first novel. With a working title, ‘The Pearl of Shantytown’, her book is soon to be published by Text Publishing.