Agnes Mark and her sisters Victoria Kennedy and Susan Kennedy and their first cousin Celia Fletcher, are the senior members of the Mpakwithi Nation, the traditional owners of an area at the junction of Tent Pole Creek and the Wenlock River on the West Coast of Cape York Peninsula. Following the massacres led by Frank Jardine and Lachlan Kennedy during the 1860s members of many decimated tribes, including the Mpakwithi, settled at the Old Mapoon Mission, on the traditional land of the Tjungundji Nation. In 1963 Director of Native Affairs Patrick Killoran ordered police to remove the Tjungundji traditional owners, as well as all other residents of the Mapoon Presbyterian Church Mission and burn the community to the ground. Comalco had been granted a mining lease over the area. As the boat sailed away, the people of Old Mapoon witnessed the Police and Department of Native Affairs carpenters razing buildings, still full of the people’s belongings. The Mpakwithi along with many of the peoples who were forcibly removed from Old Mapoon, were relocated to New Mapoon near Bamaga at the northernmost tip of Cape York Peninsula, where they now live. The sisters’ grandfather Donald Fletcher, the last fluent speaker of Mpakwithi, learned his language by escaping from the mission dormitory to spend time with free Mpakwithi elders. The speaking of First Nation languages was until quite recently forbidden and punishable in many parts of Australia, so it is not difficult to see why most First Nations languages are now in such a fragile state.
Victoria Kennedy and her sisters Agnes Mark and Susan Kennedy learned songs in the Mpakwithi language from their grandfather. Throughout the years they have continued to identify as Mpakwithi and now, with the support of their friend and linguist Xavier Barker, they are working to revive their language. Whilst they have not been able to speak Mpakwithi, they have been expressing their culture through their visual and performance arts. The limited vocabulary learnt from their grandfather is threaded throughout their work, as are elements of Mpakwithi folklore and stories. Their story is not just of the revival of their language but of the Mpakwithi First Nation itself.