Alison Lester on Indigenous Literacy Day 2017

Today is Indigenous Literacy Day, a day that celebrates Indigenous culture, language, stories and, of course, literacy.

Alison Lester is a YA author and lifetime ambassador of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, and she spoke to Nic about the scarcity of books in very remote Indigenous communities and the importance of first language literacy. “If you keep language, you keep culture too,” she said.

Alison, along with fellow ambassadors Josh Pyke and Justine Clarke, and elders and students from the Yakanarra community in Western Australia will be launching their collaborative effort, a book titled Yakanarra Song Book — it’s a collection of songs about place, animals, hunting and fishing written in the Walmajarri language — at the Sydney Opera House later today.