BlackWords and reciprocal recognitions

BlackWords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Storytellers is a digital humanities, online literature resource devoted to the creative writing and oral storytelling of Aboriginal Australians. BlackWords was established by Aboriginal writers and scholars in 2007, and in 2013 AIATSIS began a major new project in BlackWords. An academically rigorous vehicle for the researching and teaching of Aboriginal literature and orature, the value of BlackWords lies in the great cultural and political importance of the literature emergent since the 1960s, and in the central role storytelling has for millennia played in traditionally oral Aboriginal cultures. AIATSIS new BlackWords project, Aboriginal Literatures, Stories and Languages, combines academic and community research to develop education and research trails about the stories and literatures of distinct language groups in a series of politico-historical contexts, and with particular reference to the aesthetic and political significance of the use of traditional Australian languages, pidgins, creoles and Aboriginal Englishes. The aims of the project include supporting the integration of the stories and literatures into the curriculum, and their role in language revival and the resilience of Aboriginal peoples, which is uniquely bound up with their connectedness to the languages.