Between Two Worlds
Elisha Kissick is standing on the shore of Back Beach on Minjerribah, a small island off the coast of Queensland known to most of the world as North Stradbroke Island. She looks out over the same waters that have held her attention since she was a little girl, when she would come here with her family to forage the small clams called eugaries from the soft, wet sand. A last gasp of light streaks of cloud sitting over Moreton Bay, giving them an orange glow. The wind is picking up with the incoming tide and Elisha feels it stir her hair. The air is salty and the only sounds are those of the waves and occasional call of the shorebirds circling overhead.
Elisha was born here on Minjerribah to a white mother and a father from the Quandamooka First Nations tribe, the first inhabitants of the island, who have called it home for 40,000 years. At the time, being Aboriginal Australian meant a life largely overlooked. Her path diverged however, when her parents decided she and her brothers would be better served spending their formative years on the mainland.
“They wanted us to have a better education and be more worldly and experience things”, Elisha reflects. This change served her well, although it came with different challenges. As long as she can remember, Elisha struggled with identity and a sense of not belonging either with mainstream Australia or with her Quandamooka community.
“You know, I was at a school with only one other family that was Aboriginal. You wouldn't say that you're Aboriginal. You wouldn't talk about it. You'd just try and blend in. Because as soon as you did, you'd get teased.”
A small shell glimmering in the sand catchers Elisha’s eye and she bends to pick it and turns it over in her hands, examining its pearlessence and contemplating its symbolism. To the Quandamooka, shells signify coming together.
After a moment, she continues along the beach, still holding the shell. She places one foot carefully after another, navigating obstacles and taking care not to disturb crabs.
On the occasions she returned home during childhood Elisha found not the respite she hoped for, but more justification. “You not only had to explain yourself to the white community, but also the black community to prove your blackness. It's a really big thing, identity. Even within our kids these days”.
And so Elisha moved through life. On the outside succeeding—graduating university, travelling the world, and building a career in mental healthcare. On the inside though, an emptiness. A longing for belonging.
Elisha stops and digs in the sand. She has been stepping slowly, purposefully along the shoreline, eyes fixed on the sand. She stops suddenly and digs with her hand, then digs a little further and pulls up a eugarie. Smiling to herself, she remembers all the times she has done this with her parents, grandparents and brothers. The whole family looking for little morsels to cook up for dinner. Eugaries curry was a favourite. Elisha tucks this one into her bag before moving on, careful steps again, searching for the little mounds that indicate their location.
Perhaps Elisha’s path was set years before she was even born. Her grandmother had already dedicated her life to caring for her community. As the last living missionary on Minjerribah, she and her generation shaped great change on the island. Taken from family at a young age with the intent of assimilation in what became known as the “Stolen Generations”, she fought for land rights, education rights and respect so that Elisha and others could live “on country” and enjoy a standard of living expected in a place that called itself “the lucky country”. At great risk, she also passed down cultural knowledge. Often she and others would take the children under their care secretly into the bush to teach language, trying to hold on to their culture at a time it was being taken from them. In her later years, she would tell Elisha stories of those that were caught.
“Some were punished by being transported to Western Queensland, to Cherbourg. It was terrible up there. It was the most horrific place. You didn't want to be sent there. A lot of young girls would come home pregnant from there.”
Still, they persisted. For that was life to them- persistence. This was a time when they were not even considered human, let alone second-class citizens.
“My grandparents were born a plant or an animal”, Elisha says, a sigh in her voice. “We weren't seen as human until 1967. My father was also born a plant or an animal. You could still shoot an Aboriginal person in 1970 and get away with it in Queensland. They used to push children and women off cliffs and then call it “gin falls”. The whole point of it was to either assimilate us into white society or breed us out. If you were darker, you were a slave. You had to go do domestic work. If you were lighter, they could put you in a white family and bring you up white and you won't know that you're black.”
This despite both grandparents having very different upbringings.
“Grandad was classed as “Uptown” because his father had a trade. “He was a ‘useful’ black”. Was allowed to live in town, got an education, went to the white school. Nan was classed as a “mission girl”. Had to live one mile out of town.” That same land a mile from town has since been reclaimed by its traditional Quandamooka owners who now live there peacefully without interference.
It is the example set by her grandparents that pushes Elisha forward today. Conscious to honour and add to her family’s legacy, many of the traits she describes in her grandmother are clear within Elisha herself: a generosity, reverence for those that have come before and a graceful yet quietly determined resilience to challenges.
This, though, has not come without struggle. The ongoing search for acceptance continued well into adulthood in a changing Australia influx with immigrants. First Nations people remained largely ignored, despite the country pronouncing its own multiculturalism. “Everyone else was accepted in Australia except for Aboriginal people,” says Elisha. “I was more accepted overseas than in my own country.”
Only with time, experience and changing attitudes did Elisha begin to feel she belonged. Then, in 2018 tragedy struck.
“We lost six elders in a span of six months, my Dad included. My Nan too, months after. It was just horrific. But it's a big change in the community's structure as well, because there were a lot of key members that just aren't around. And I don't think the community was really ready for that.” Suddenly an elder, Elisha was thrown into a role she wasn’t prepared for. “I'm not ready to be up there,” she reflects on that time. “Why’re you asking me questions, kids? I'm still a kid. I don't want to be a knowledge keeper.”
Although still somewhat uneasy with her position, Elisha has since embraced the responsibility. Seeing it as an opportunity to set an example for her own daughters who, despite changing times, also struggle with identity.
“My daughter, she has blonde hair, blue eyes, lighter skin. So she wasn't accepted at first with Mob. They're like, ‘You're not even black’. And then she's coming home to my dad, six years old, going ‘Poppy, but I'm black on the inside’, and crying. Because she’s a fair skinned Aboriginal.”
Slowly, and not without resistance, the First Nations knowledge Elisha’s Nan was so careful to preserve is now being appreciated. When a lightning strike ignited a bushfire in 2014, it wiped out an estimated 70% of bushland on the island. For years prior to that, Quandamooka Rangers had pleaded with authorities to implement the fire knowledge handed down to them. The disaster, however, did lead to a joint management plan based on that same ancient knowledge.
Today, Elisha has found her place by bringing together the two worlds that seemed so far apart in her younger years. She spends her time sharing her cultural knowledge and history with visitors to Minjerribah. More and more, interest in First Nations knowledge and stories is growing both internationally and in Australia, thanks in no small part to the careful steps of people like Elisha and her Nan before her. She is forever grateful for the endurance of her grandparents.
“Their contribution, I think, for their time and how powerful those two were, is the way were able to look ahead”.
Having collected enough shells for a meal, Elisha pauses her journey along the beach. She sits by a small estuary that leads to marshland, and begins to rinse the shells in the clear water. The sky has turned to shades of a deeper blue and purple, the sun having now dipped the horizon. Elisha looks out at the water and skyward again as she works, thinking of her ancestors and everything they achieved.
“We're still here”, she reflects. “We're survivors, our people. We're not going to roll over. They wiped out 30,000 of us in the first frontier wars, but we're still here.”
