Updated March 02, 2017 15:07:20

It took decades of fighting for recognition and several suicides before the Northern Territory's Tiwi Islands community finally accepted a group of Aboriginal transgender women.

The Sistagirls want to spread the message of their journey of resilience and hope when they travel to Sydney's Mardi Gras for the first time on Saturday.

"To go to the Mardi Gras is to showcase our culture and our people, how Tiwi people evolved in this generation and how we became stronger in our community," said Sistagirl Crystal Johnson.

Photo: The women screenprint their outfits for the Sydney Mardi Gras. (ABC News: Avani Dias)

"To show people you can make a change."

The group of 30 is preparing to travel almost 4,000 kilometres after numerous fundraising campaigns, both on the Tiwi Islands as well as around the country.

"It's going to be fantabulous, I'm looking forward to it," Ainsley Kerinaiua said.

"I can't wait to be in a glamorous outfit and parading out there with the rest of the LGBTI community."

The group have screen-printed costumes with glow-in-the-dark paint emblazoned with traditional graphic patterns and totems.

"We want to show off all the glitz and glamour but also the Tiwi culture with our traditional dressing and our traditional songs," Ms Johnson said.

"We want to showcase out there in the wider world that there are people who are Indigenous in Australia and LGBTIQ."

It has taken years for the Sistagirls to feel they can be open about their identities, including a spate of suicides among the group.

Those who died "had been bullied, picked on in our community, but they left their legacy behind, they left something for us", Ms Johnson said.

"We thought about suicide and why did they do that, and I tell the Sistagirls, 'they're not dead, they're still alive'. We believe in spirits, they're still with us 24/7. That's the thing about Indigenous people, we have our spirituality."

It took the women 15 years to win tolerance from the community, Nicole Miller-Mungatopi said.

"We had to fight for our acceptance," she said.

"Now they are accepting us because of suicides we've had here, deaths amongst our girls ... Now we're out, I just hope other communities accept their Sistagirls like ours."

Photo: Sistagirl Shem Alimankinni collects clams from the mangroves on the Tiwi Islands. (ABC News: Avani Dias)

Watch Story Hunters' story about Sistagirls on ABC iView.

Topics: sexuality, events, suicide, community-and-society, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, tiwi-0810, darwin-0800

First posted March 02, 2017 07:31:06