Thirty-eight years ago the late Ephraim Bani felt an ancestral duty to revive a lost identity and introduced the Winds of Zenadth Cultural Festival.

The biennial event in September brings the residents of Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait Islands) together to celebrate its rich seafaring history through storytelling.

The lack of accommodation for visitors to the 17 inhabited islands whose infrastructure supports a population of little more than 4,000 residents has limited its cultural impact on the rest of Australia.

But that could dramatically change soon, with a solid proposal on the regional council's agenda to welcome cruise ships to sail in the Torres Strait in 2027.

The son of the late festival's founder, councillor Gabrielle Bani, is willing to consider the proposal but with strict conditions.

"The possibility is certainly there – we've spoken about this in our consult committees about that idea," Cr Bani told National Indigenous Times.

"The challenge for us is to manage that. It is a challenge for not only council, but for all of our communities here, the Traditional Owners, the Kaurareg people.

"So maybe a few hundred people (per day) I think would be alright – that is, if they are sleeping on the boats."

Priority has always been given to accommodate visiting Torres Strait families and also performers that arrive on Thursday Island (Waiben) ahead of mainland tourists.

In a part of the country that has weathered the challenges of climate change on the islands throughout the festival's length, consideration is being given to the impact that greater numbers on the island would cause to its environment.

"One of the things we have been talking about was that the purpose of the first festival and all the ones after that was about dad's whole vision to educate our own people first – it was really not for people from the outside that we were going to entertain or showcase," Cr Bani said.

"That was the whole idea because our language was fading, our culture was disconnected from our totems, so it was about providing that fire, but the focus was always internal.

"It was our people, our children in schools and our own families that went through that period of the old government school system to connect back with the things of value to us. You can see the original intent and now we're talking up cruise ships coming in.

"We don't want the festival to lose something and for it to transforms into something else – and, of course, that is whether we can manage it at all."

The original festival in 1987 was built on the vision of promoting the traditions and customs of all Torres Strait Islanders.

The groundwork for the ensuing festivals to follow was laid down in the culture's totemic groups, genealogies, land, waters, territories and their boundaries.

Concerned with the growing erosion of language and culture – especially on his Mabuyag Island homeland – Cr Bani's father, the seventh traditional Chief of his Wagadagam tribe, always had wanted to celebrate his culture that had close Melanesian ties to the nearby New Guinean island.

"He wanted to travel the world, not to learn about anything else, but to share the knowledge that he had," Cr Bani said.

"At the heart of everything was language and culture. It was because of the impact of colonisation, the (Christian) missionaries, and people coming into the area that hurt.

"He was always really determined to try and restore our languages and culture.

"When he first came to Thursday Island, he was interested in doing some language work."

The two prime traditional languages of the region – Kalaw Lagaw Ya (the Western Torres Strait dialect) and Meriam Mir (the Eastern Torres Strait dialect) that were similar but not identical – were passed down orally and had no written script up until nearly 50 years ago.

"Dad's first challenge was to find a way how to write the language that has always been spoken and passed on for thousands of years," Cr Bani said.

"It took him more than six years to create an orthography."

Linguists call it EPO – Ephraim's Practical Orthography – that has been utilised in universities and other academic institutions since.

The new spelling system aimed to enhance literacy and language preservation.

Governments of the time more than a century ago and Christian missionaries had stopped Torres Strait Islanders from speaking their own languages, performing cultural dances and other related-ceremonies - all in the name of assimilation.

The Winds of Zenadth Cultural Festival was later created with a bigger picture in mind to build a bricks-and-mortar cultural centre for education of the Islanders about themselves.

That centre was to establish a "keeping place" to retrieve lost artefacts that once sailed back to Britain and landed in the hands of Cambridge University.

The Wagadagam Elder travelled back and forth between the cultures throughout the 1990s to bring home what was rightfully the property of the Indigenous people in the Torres Strait.

"There were certain pieces over there that was stolen, and we just wanted to get them back," Cr Bani told of his dad's story.

Hundreds of school students on the islands annually visit the centre and delve into the archives.

Cr Bani says government restructuring since 1982 had shaped a significant cultural shift that included Uncle Eddie Mabo's key role to challenge Terra Nullius – that is, the myth of the land belonging to no-one – that in 1992 recognised the land rights of the Meriam people, who are the traditional owners of the Murray Islands, which include its Mer, Dauer and Waier territories.

"The festival has a lot to igniting that passion and reconnecting people to their values from the very first festival and the festivals that happened after," he said.

Cr Bani recalls that his father was also one of the last people to go through their traditional practice of initiations for men on the islands that died out for a time.

"Even though some of the practices have changed a little bit, and our culture has changed over the years, we are still valued-driven people," he said.

"Everything we do now, which was practiced 200 years ago, it is done a certain way for a certain purpose because of the values of our legal systems, our paternal systems, within our family-friendship structures to do with marriage, to do with initiation and to do with ceremonies."