Indigenous Australian literature

This article is missing information about oral traditions (discussion at Talk:Indigenous Australians#Oral tradition). Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page. (November 2024)

Indigenous Australian literature is the fiction, plays, poems, essays and other works authored by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

While a letter written by Bennelong to Governor Arthur Phillip in 1796 is the first known work written in English by an Aboriginal person, David Unaipon was the first Aboriginal author to be published, in 1924–5. Since then, the number of published and recognised Indigenous authors has grown enormously; as of 2020^[update], AustLit's BlackWords lists 23,481 works, and 6,949 authors and organisations. Nearly all are in English, as Indigenous Australians had not written their languages before the colonisation of Australia. Few works have thus far been written in Aboriginal Australian languages, but with recent efforts at language revival, this is expected to grow.