Indigenous writing does many and sometimes contradictory things – it continues millennial tradition of storytelling while innovating our story forms; it reflects ourselves back to ourselves while nudging alternative ambition; and, it acts as mirror to Australian society while getting readers to imagine different futures.
Online database, BlackWords records over 25,000 entries of Indigenous writing and storytelling from over 7,000 Indigenous authors and organisations. If written words reflect faces of a society, should we develop better ways to understand what Indigenous writing is saying about us and about Australian futures?
Sampling BlackWords for Indigenous writing from the 1970s to 2020s, in the 2023 Indigenous Professoriate Autumn Lecture, I will:
- create an understanding of the genre diversity of Indigenous writing;
- consider the distinctions of Indigenous writing irrespective of genre;
- take a deeper dive into selected works from this modern era;
- explore recurring themes across this canon; and,
- wonder about the University’s role in the making, reading, and impact of Indigenous writing.
