Getting down with Didg — Queensland’s Deaf Indigenous Dance Group

By Sean Davey
Photographs by Aishah Kenton & Sean Davey/Oculi

Didg prepare to perform at the 2021 Laura Quinkan Dance Festival in Cape York.

It’s a warm Wednesday afternoon in the far north Queensland city of Cairns. In a car park on Pease Street in the suburb of Manoora, the sound of clap sticks and clapping hands can be heard from inside a building.

It has not yet been a week since members of Deaf Indigenous Dance Group returned from the 2021 Laura Quinkan dance festival in Cape York, in which they took part for the first time. Now they are back in their rehearsal room, practising routines for the Cairns Naidoc Week march and performances in Fogarty Park.

Nathaniel Murray, Paul Norman, Leslie Footscray and Clifford Johnson rehearse in Cairns

Formed in 1997, Didg celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who are deaf or hard of hearing. The Cairns-based group’s mission is to showcase and promote their abilities and talents. As much a social club as a dance group, Didg provides a safe space for its members to dance, express their culture and hang out with other people with whom they can communicate freely.

Sue Frank, 43, has been involved with Didg since its inception. Today, as well as dancing in the group, she is its manager. Though she was born in Tully (two hours south of Cairns by car), her family is from Badu in the Torres Strait, where she progressed from lip reading to using sign language when she was seven or eight years old. But it wasn’t until she was much older that she met other Indigenous people who were deaf.

Nathaniel Murray, Amelia Street, Clifford Johnson and Sue Frank at a Didg rehersal.

“I was about 18 when I started getting involved with the deaf mob and the community,” Frank says. “I started taking everything in and learning. I started signing [with them] and started to develop my social skills. I got confident from being included.”

First Nations people have a strong cultural connection to language, she says, meaning those with hearing loss often experience high rates of loneliness — especially when they don’t have other people around them who can understand and support them.

Patricia Banjo-Morris and Nathaniel Murray at NAIDOC Day celebrations in Cairns.

Frank has worked with deaf children in the Indigenous community of Lockhart River, on the eastern side of Cape York. “I’ve seen [Indigenous kids] who were depressed and lonely, they had no one,” she says.

“The children were getting frustrated, they weren’t going to school. We tried to get the parents to bring them in; it was very difficult. There were a lot of barriers for them. There was no education about the language. They needed their language, and there was a delay.”

Didg leads the NAIDOC march in Cairns.

Leslie Footscray, 47, is from Bamaga on the northern tip of Cape York, and also has family in New Mapoon and Lockhart River. He moved to Cairns to attend school when he was 10, returning to Bamaga after he finished his education.

“I was born hearing but when I was young I got little rocks got in my ears when I was swimming, which led to me becoming deaf,” he says. “My father is also deaf.

Paul Norman, Nathaniel Murray, Leslie Footscray, Amelia Street and Clifford Johsnon at Didg rehersal.

“I went back to Bamaga and showed my dad and my family all the dances I knew. I tried to get him to dance with me but he wouldn’t. I asked all my family to come and dance but none of them came, I was the only one.

“There was nothing for me there, so I told them I was moving back to Cairns.”

He adds: “Didg is part of my family. I love the dancing and the community. When we went to Laura I was happy, it was just fantastic, lots of laughs, it was a great weekend. I feel happy that there’s people more Aboriginal people.

Didg members at NAIDOC celebrations in Cairns.

“There is no support [for deaf kids] where I am from. I would love to see more support up there. Mum helped me a lot when I was young but after I finished school I didn’t have any work — I would just go pig hunting, and for kangaroos and echidnas. I lived on the land, we’d eat fish and turtle.”

Frank says it’s important that Indigenous people with hearing impairment have the space in which to express themselves as well as their connection to culture.

“Indigenous people suffer more [when they are hard of hearing],” she says. “They lose their culture, they lose their identity, they lose their language.

“We are not a disability, we have an ability. We’re equal with the hearing world.”

• This article was first published in The Guardian in April 2022.