The CSU Library Indigenous Liaison Team acknowledges that Wednesday 5 September 2012 is National Indigenous Literacy Day.
Indigenous Literacy Day (ILD) will be launched in a series of activities around Australia that will feature ILF Patron Thérèse Rein, Miles Franklin Award-winning author Kim Scott, and a number of ILF ambassadors including Kate Grenville, Andy Griffiths, Anita Heiss, Sally Morgan and May O’Brien.
Meanwhile, a story written by a young Aboriginal boy in a remote community in the Kimberleys has inspired a composition that will be sung at the Sydney Opera House.
Indigenous Literacy Day is now in its sixth year, and is organised by the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. The Foundation is a national charity, initiated by the Australian Book Industry, which works with schools, libraries, individuals, businesses and other organisations across Australia to support and promote Indigenous literacy.
For example, in 2011, the Foundation delivered over 20,000 books in more than 200 remote communities from the Kimberleys in Western Australian to Broken Hill in NSW, and in the past three years it has gifted more than 80,000 new and culturally specific books to Indigenous babies and children up to the age of 15 years old.
Only one in five children living in a remote Indigenous community can read or write to the accepted minimum level. Less than 36% of people living in a remote community have access to a library.
More information can be found at the Indigenous Literacy Foundation website.
Information about the Library’s Indigenous Liaison Team can be found on the Library’s Information for Indigenous Students webpage.