..gave 10,000 coconuts to their island neighbours and an additional 3,000 to the Papuan Industries Limited for a new church rather than selling" the coconuts, according to Lui-Chivizhe. Meanwhile, in the 1930s, control of the pearl boats was taken over by government administrators, who controlled "earnings of the Islanders who worked the boats," Lui-Chivizhe writes. When the Islanders didn't work fast enough or hard enough to suit the administrators, the Islanders were punished. Eventually, the Islanders not only lost the right to control their production, the government of Queensland "introduced a nightly curfew and a permit system to control Islander movement between the Islands." Eventually, those restrictions were eased, and more recently, things have not been quite as repressive. "Even though the social and political organizational context for our lives has changed with European arrival in the region," Lui-Chivizhe concludes, "the future for my people, though uncertain, holds much hope."

Conclusion: There may be justifiable reasons for hopefulness, in terms of the future of Torres Strait Islanders; but according to an article in the journal Emergency Medicine (Hunter, et al., 2002), many young people in nations "with histories of British colonization," Torres Strait included, are committing suicide. Indeed, the article points out that while the suicide rate in the years 1990-1995 for Australia as a whole was 21 per 100,000 people, and the rate for Queensland was 14.5 per 100,000, the suicide rate for "indigenous males" (Torres Strait Islanders and Aboriginals) between the ages of 15 to 24 years of age was 112.5 per 100,000 people, Hunter reports. The rate for Torres Strait Islanders and Aboriginals between the ages of 25 and 34 was 72.5 per 100,000, according to Hunter's article.

Sadly, 78% of the above-mentioned male suicides were by hanging, Hunter continued. Why are so many youthful males of native populations, notably Torres Strait Islanders, taking their own lives? Hunter's research indicates that these specific cultural peoples live in an environment "of relative disadvantage" and part of the disadvantage is manifest through "unemployment,...

And the "working group" is to report back with specific ideas and proposals in December, 2006. Will verifiable, meaningful change result from this working group? Stay tuned.
Bibliography - List of References

Beckett, Jeremy 2000, 'Chapter 3: Colonial Occupation,' Humanities Department Central

Queensland University, Retrieved July 20, 2006 at http://humanities.cqu.edu.au/abtorres/tsiwww/course/module/chap3/chap3.htm.

COAG, 2006, 'Indigenous Issues: Generational Commitment,' Council of Australian

Governments' Meeting 14 July 2006. Retrieved July 20, 2006, at http://www.coag.gov.au/meetings/140706/index.htm#indigenous.

Herle, Anita 2000, 'Torres Strait Islanders: Stories from an Exhibition', Ethnos, vol. 65, no. 2, pp. 253-274.

Hunter, Ernest, & Harvey, Desley 2002, 'Indigenous suicide in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.' Emergency Medicine, vol. 14, pp. 14-23.

Lui-Chivizhe, Leah 1996, 'Cultural Identity and Development in the Torres Strait Islands' in Interface of Cultural Identity Development, ed. Baidyanath Sarasioati, ISBN 81-246-0054-

6. Retrieved July 20, 2006, at http://ignca.nic.in/ls_03009.htm.

Seebohm, Kym, & Morvell, Gerry 1998, 'Towards an Integrated Sustainable Development

Management Strategy for Torres Strait,' Australian Geographical Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 82-93.

Wetherell, David 2004, 'The Bishop of Carpentaria and the Torres Strait Pearlers' Strike of 1936.' The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 185-192.