Faith on a sinking ship: Climate change and Christianity in the Torres Strait

Updated

This tiny island is just 2 kilometres long and 300 metres wide — and it's getting smaller. People here are confident that a higher power will save them from rising tides, but their beliefs have come at a cost.

Halfway between a little blue house and the ocean, a group of boys and men gather under a tree.

They're making kup-mari — a traditional ground oven — to cook a special community feast.

The youngsters chat in creole as they dunk raw chickens into a plastic bucket of marinade, then wrap them in tight alfoil suits.

Tonight is a celebration to mark the end of school holidays.

But beneath the festivity sits an ominous truth — this community is fighting for its survival, in more ways than one.

An eroding paradise

We're on Poruma, or Coconut Island, in Australia's Torres Strait.

It's a tiny dot in the ocean, halfway between the northern tip of Queensland and the south of Papua New Guinea.



Home to towering coconut trees and rainbow houses, this tropical paradise is just 2 kilometres long and 300 metres wide.

But it's shrinking.

King tides have been battering its beaches, and coastal erosion is eating the island at both ends.

The islanders are deeply religious, and many believe God will save Poruma from the rising tides.

"To everybody else this place is sinking," says local man Jim Larry.

"It will never sink. As long as God resides on this island."

But that faith doesn't negate the fact that the island needs help; its people have long called for Australia to act.

"We believe in God, but we do not believe in God so that others can neglect us and forget that we are part of this country," local Phillemon Mosby says.

"We are citizens of Australia. We are a dying race of people, First Nations people of this country."

And climate change isn't the only existential threat this community is facing.

The cost of Christianity

Christianity came to the Torres Strait in 1871, when the London Missionary Society arrived in the region's north-east.

On Poruma, the word of God was widely embraced.

"Because we're a small island, it was very easy to influence and control people's beliefs," Phillemon says.

"It was easy for people to transition over from their traditional, ancient beliefs and practices."

Today, 97 per cent of people on Poruma are Christian, according to the most recent Census. Compare that to the national average and there's a difference of 45 per cent.

But the islanders' acceptance of Christianity has come at a cost.

When they gained this faith, they lost parts of their culture, says Aunty Nora Pearson, a parishioner and former Poruma chairperson.

"Christianity came and kind of trimmed us," she says.

"It cut some of the shape and size of them things we used to do before."

Phillemon says the missionaries condemned traditional practices as "demonic" and forced the people of Poruma to speak English or the dialect creole.

"The elders heard stories of other places where there were harsh penalties for people practicing their culture," he says.

"People wanted to be in a position where they weren't seen as 'blacks' or 'natives', as such. They were reaching out for a better life with a different identity."

And so, ancient rites slipped away, and the language fell asleep.



Phillemon believes the loss is not a blight on Christianity, but the colonisers who brought it.

"God's given me this culture," he says.

"I don't believe [my faith] is contrary to my traditional practice and culture."

Signs and spirituality

Phillemon says spiritual beliefs on Poruma "exist in two worlds".

"One is the Christian values and principles, and the other one is the spiritual beliefs according to our kinship structure and system," he explains.

Phillemon's cultural spiritual beliefs provide a framework for understanding the animals, the environment and the sea.

"If a family member passes away, a sign will come to us through our totems," he says.

"If the totem for a particular clan is a bird then, out of the ordinary, the bird would behave in a way that could only be sighted by a particular family member. That's how people know, before the news gets home, that someone has passed on. That's our spirituality.

"Whereas, our spiritual Christian belief is about where we're going: life after death."

The residents of Poruma realise faith alone won't solve the issues they face, like climate change.

But they pray for help.

"We have faith in God, and we'll stay here," says Aunty Nora.

"Because our families died here, we got the graveyard at the front there, my mother and father in there, my daughter in there. So, it's very hard for us.

"People can say to us, 'Move,' but we can't."

Sea-hunting people

Moving is a fraught topic — and not just because the people of Poruma have a deep emotional connection to their land.

In 2004, the islanders were granted Native Title of the land and surrounding sea.

As Councillor Francis Pearson explains, fishing is central to the livelihood of locals.

"If we move [to the mainland], it'll make it very difficult because we're not land-hunting people … like our Aboriginal brothers and sisters," he says.

"No, we're sea-hunting people.

"We can say, 'This is the area our dugong will come next' … and the tide tells us that this is a good time to go fishing for crayfish or for mackerel or whatever.

"It's become part of our life."

But warming waters could kill the coral and affect the sea life.

'My God will heal this land'

Some of the residents, like Jim, say their concerns aren't being heard.

In January 2014, he was part of a protest on Poruma calling for aid.

The island was lashed by king tides that swallowed most of the jetty and weakened vegetation around the coastline.

The Queensland Government committed funds to extend Poruma's sandbag seawall, but the locals are still waiting.

"We've been crying for the last 20 years from the Torres Strait … and still nothing is happening," Jim says.

But he still believes his island will remain strong.

"I'm a man of faith, my God will heal this land," Jim says.

Phillemon says if Poruma was to go down, "we'll go down with it".

"This is our ship and every living soul on this island is the captain of this ship," he says.

'We don't need to be strangers'

But the island needs more than sandbags to heal.

In his role with the council, Phillemon helps maintain and revive traditional languages and rituals across the Torres Strait's 15 communities.

"I believe our sea and our land need us as much as we need them," he says.

"We don't need to be strangers. True custodianship is where we understand our environment, and our environment understands who we are."

At Coconut Island primary school, the traditional language, Kulkalgau Ya, has been introduced into the curriculum.

"When our traditional language was introduced into school, the children … thought it was so funny," says Eldridge Mosby, a teacher who leads the weekly lessons.

"Sometimes they'd laugh about how the words are pronounced and we'd always encourage them, 'You shouldn't laugh at our language, this is our traditional tongue.'"

But the students now take their language seriously, and it's created a cycle of intergenerational learning.

The kids are teaching words to their parents, who missed out on learning the native tongue.

"We are so proud of our children … how they speak, how they learn," Eldridge says.

"It's only little, every time, but we're getting there. We can see that we will benefit, our community will benefit, and the school will benefit."

A new chapter for Poruma

The revival of culture hasn't been frictionless.

"There are still those who think if they participate then they neglect what they've accepted [through] their Christian beliefs," Phillemon explains.

But that hasn't stopped him from managing the Urab Dancers — a Poruma-based troupe — for more than a decade.

"The songs and dances that we've sung [and performed] for the last however many years are a credit to what our ancestors have achieved, and their determination," he says.

"But what is our story today to pass on to our future generations?"

One Saturday night, in a flower-filled hall, that story starts taking shape.

The families on the island have gathered for kai-kai, a potluck feast starring the kup-mari-cooked chickens, and a night of singing and dancing.

After grace, and dinner, a curious toddler in a floral shirt runs to the front of the room.

He plants himself next to a traditional drum and begins making a beat.

Kids gather around him, as do members of the Urab Dancers, and they burst into song in the Kulkalgau Ya tongue.

"The younger ones are writing their story, they're shifting their story in this modern world," Phillemon says.

"Everything interrelates and intertwines on this island."

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Topics: religion-and-beliefs, community-and-society, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, climate-change, environment, family-and-children, human-interest, christianity, torres-strait-islands, australia, qld, cairns-4870

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