Le op: An Islander’s history of Torres Strait turtle-shell masks

Abstract

This thesis tells a history of the role of turtle in mediating Islanders’ physical and spiritual engagements with the sea, the land and the sky, with each other and with life and death. While it is predominantly about masks made from the carapace of turtles in the Torres Strait, it is also about the enduring history of cultural practices that did not die out when Islanders were colonised. By focussing on several masks made by Torres Strait Islanders as key ‘documents’ of history, supported by published and archival historical sources, I re-place these enchanting cultural knowledge keepers within an Islander’s sense of history directed through key Islander forms of historical narrative including storytelling and performance. I argue that without an emphasis on understanding their human, animal and environmental worlds, these masks are empty, devoid of their continuing cultural connection to Islanders. In writing this thesis, I looked for and engaged with the things that I thought Islanders would want to read about our past, to create a counter narrative that makes sense to Islanders. I wanted to take back the masks, by writing about them in a way that made them ours again. It is my modest effort to relocate Islanders and our sense of history from that of an ‘offstage presence’ to the centre of the stage that we construct ourselves.