The long way home
Written By Divya Venkataraman
How many forms can a mother take? The Everywoman sits down with Amanda Ducker, the creator and co-producer of the documentary-in-process The Pledge, about the twin promises she made and continues to live out in her daily life: to care for a young girl, and to tell a story as old as time.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article mentions the name and uses imagery of a person who has died.
Amanda Ducker always felt a preternatural ease with Nappanangka Latenzia (“Tenny”) Grant, the young Warumungu girl that her mother would bring home on holidays from the boarding school that she worked at. Tenny was a bright, warm spark. They grew close. “For Tenny, I suppose, my mother represented what she didn’t have, being so far from home. She was a source of great security and comfort to her,” reflects Amanda, speaking to The Everywoman from her home in Hobart, Tasmania. “And for mum, Tenny was an intriguing, special girl, who she wanted to protect.” Tenny fell comfortably into the rhythms of family life. “We all just fit,” she says. What began there followed Amanda and Tenny into adulthood. Now, on the back of a promise to Tenny, Amanda is raising her daughter Naida alongside her biological children on the southern island of Lutruwita/Tasmania. Together, they’re navigating their way through maintaining Naida’s connection to her home, her culture, and herself.
DV: You and Tenny were folded into each others’ lives from a young age. How did that develop into adulthood?
AD: When Tenny had a baby aged 20, she decided she wanted to raise her baby, Naida, with our family, with my babies at the time. So she moved to Hobart, just before Christmas 2012.
She moved into an apartment down the street; we raised our children together from then. She would have lived with us, actually, but we were short on bedrooms at the time. She immediately made sense in our lives. There was just a forever feeling about it.
DV: You were also raising three children at the time. How did your family evolve after that?
AD: I have two birth children, now aged 28 and 19. And my third daughter is biologically my sister's daughter. She's 18. And so I've raised her since birth as well.
DV: It’s a much more fluid conception of family than we’re used to seeing in Western culture. How would you describe your philosophy of motherhood?
AD: The whole idea of a nuclear family, it seemed to be a very limited and closed way to live. I guess I was just susceptible to having a bigger, messier family. I didn’t seek it out, but I was just naturally open to it, I think.
I think life is better this way. It’s very much how many Aboriginal families live, it’s how a lot of other cultures live. The Western way is the anomaly.
I've got the son of a friend of a friend from France staying on my couch at the moment. He’s been here for three months. It’s kind of how I like my home.
Going back to your life with Naida and Tenny. How did that develop in the years after she moved to Hobart?
AD: They were some of the best years of my life. Some of the best of all of ours, I think. They were just a hundred metres away. My mum, who of course had first united us all, was there, my older daughter would help us, and we had the little ones running around. We operated as a little group, and I think very successfully.
After four years, Tenny took Naida, then five, back to Tennant Creek to live. She was doing great work with NAAJA, she had done two years of the National Youth Indigenous Leadership Program. But unbeknownst to me, she had started drinking. The pressures were becoming too great. She was sort of falling back into that way of life. But it wasn’t easy for Tenny, later on. In 2019, Tenny asked if I would look after Naida, if she could live with us in Hobart. She was 7 ½.
Tenny asked if I could raise Naida for her. I said, I can do it, but not alone, you know? You belong together. I guess I didn’t think it was going to be forever. I would be there as a second mother, but we would do it together.
The whole idea of a nuclear family, it seemed to be a very limited and closed way to live. I guess I was just susceptible to having a bigger, messier family. I didn’t seek it out, but I was just naturally open to it, I think.
I think life is better this way. It’s very much how many Aboriginal families live, it’s how a lot of other cultures live. The Western way is the anomaly.
DV: Could you talk more about that idea of the ‘second mother’?
AD: My mother acted like a second mother to Tenny, all those years ago. And I’m a second mother to Naida. The sisters of Tenny are also second mothers to Naida. It is part of their family’s culture. It brings connection and a strong sense of responsibility.
DV: In July 2021, you and Naida decided to go up to Tennant Creek, two years after she’d started living with you, for a reunion with Tenny. Can you tell me about that trip?
AD: We knew it was always a temporary reunion, Tenny had said she wasn’t ready to take Naida back to live with her. But it was special. We had these wonderful days in Tennant creek, all being together, all enjoying being a family. And then, five days after we arrived, Tenny was killed in a car accident.
Six months earlier Tenny had asked me to tell her story. She’d been feeling very tormented, she felt that the stories that were getting out there were not accurately representing what it felt like to her to be a young Aboriginal woman living in the world today.
When she died, my promises to her became very real. I was to continue looking after Naida. And there was the an equal, explicit promise to help her tell her story. I think she expected I would just write it, given my journalism background, but because she had starred in an SBS documentary in 2006 there was a lot of archival footage of her as a girl. Around the same age as Naida. So we thought, why not tell her story in that way? That’s what we’d started working on.
When she died, my promises to her became very real. I was to continue looking after Naida. And there was the an equal, explicit promise to help her tell her story.
DV: How did Naida and Tenny’s family and kin in Tennant Creek feel about her living with you in Tasmania? Did you have any pushback?
AD: We always said, it’s two way traffic. I never agreed to take Naida and cut her off from her family. I agreed to take Naida and keep her connected with her family and her culture, her kin, and as much as possible. That’s what we’re trying to do with this documentary. We’re going to film the trip we’re taking together in Tennant Creek in July 2025, retracing the fateful journey we took in 2021, and we’re going to tell Tenny’s story together. Naida’s now 13.
You’ve mentioned that the documentary is being filmed in collaboration with Naida’s family as well, especially with her second mother, Lavina, who’s one of Tenny’s sisters. How does Naida feel about her life being put on screen like this?
AD: She feels very keenly the importance of telling her mother’s story. And she understands that we are doing that by linking their two childhoods in the film. But it’s been quite extraordinary to try to guide and shepherd a child through grief. It’s difficult to know what’s right, but I hope and trust that it is the right way to go. We believe in the power of storytelling for healing and honouring. I wouldn’t be exposing her to do it unless I thought it was a beautiful and meaningful way through grief.
DV: As a white woman telling the story of an Indigenous woman, have you faced criticism about whether it’s your place to do that? How do you navigate that?
AD: I understand people who might take issue with me in the telling of this story. But I think what we’re creating here, with Indigenous creatives and with the deep involvement of Tenny and Naida’s family, is important enough that it needs to be done. I have to be able to walk in this cross-cultural space, accepting the risk and the criticism, I think. I believe I owe that to Tenny, who from a very young age was asked and expected to be a bridge between cultures. She always had to do the work, as so many Aboriginal people have had to do. I don’t think that it’s been a fair exchange in that way, and I think it's up to non-Indigenous people to really do the work of understanding.
Support the creation of The Pledge at Documentary Australia here.