Content warning: This post contains images and references of persons who have passed away.

This year’s NAIDOC theme ‘Keep the Fire Burning: Blak, Loud and Proud’ features the word blak, which has seen a new wave of curiosity for some people as to how this is different from black.

This now-popular spelling has been credited to the late Erub, Mer & K'ua K'ua artist and activist Destiny Deacon. 

As a visual and mixed-media artist, Deacon achieved international success with her exhibitions that explored her lived experience as an Indigenous person.

Around 1991 Deacon coined the term ‘Blak’ in her exhibition ‘Blak lik mi’. According to curators Clare Williamson and Hetti Perkins, Deacon insisted on changing the spelling of the word. Deacon has been quoted saying that throughout her life she experienced racism from people who would often use the term ‘black c***’.

‘I just wanted to take the C out of black,’ she said.

Deacon redefined both the spelling and the meaning of the word black as a response to colonial language and to reclaim the word from an Indigenous perspective.

This spelling also differentiates the Blak experience from the experiences of other communities of colour. As well as steering away from stereotypes about dark skin colour, reinforcing the Blak experience as being beyond skin and about lived experience and connection with Culture.

This powerful gesture has resonated with many First Nations people who have adopted the spelling as they feel it represents them more than the spelling of black.