Authors among 2024 NAIDOC Week award finalists

The National NAIDOC Committee has announced the winners of the 2024 NAIDOC Week Awards.

Among the winners was artist and cultural leader Alick Tipoti, who is a fluent Kala Lagaw Ya language speaker and plans to publish a book on the topic in early 2025.

Several other authors were recognised as finalists in the awards. Among the finalists was teacher, author and media presenter Shelley Ware, who has been an ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) for 10 years, and who has authored a range of teaching resources and a children’s book (We Are Matildas, Puffin, 2023) as well as supporting the writing of seven books through the ILF’s Create Initiative. Ware was nominated for the Education Award.

Author Graham Akhurst was nominated for the Creative Talent Award. Akhurst released a debut novel, Borderland (UWAP), last year, as well as holding positions as a senior lecturer and director of the Centre of Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges at UTS and board positions with the First Nations Australian Writers Network (FNAWN), Varuna, the National Writers’ House, and the Sydney Review of Books.

In the award category Caring for Country and Culture, Elder and knowledge-holder Aunty Fran Bodkin was among the nominees. Bodkin’s book Encyclopedia Botanica (Angus & Robertson) was published in 1986, and ‘played a crucial role in acknowledging Aboriginal knowledges as a scientific source’, said NAIDOC. Bodkin later published D’harawal Climate and Natural Resources (Envirobook, 2013) and the digital work Dharawal Pharmacopeia (Western Sydney University).

Also among the finalists, in the Innovation Award category, was the storytelling organisation Common Ground First Nations, which aims to ‘create opportunities for First Nations people to be authors on their terms’ through a range of projects.

The full list of nominees and winners is available on the NAIDOC website.

Category: Awards Local news