Blak Humour: The Strategic Role and Healing Power of Humour in Aboriginal Wellbeing and Survival

Abstract

This article draws on my doctoral research, Reconciliation Rescue: An Original Blak Comedy Series and Aboriginal Cultural Perspectives on Humour, to examine how Aboriginal humour operates as a mode of resistance, truth-telling, and cultural continuity. My thesis consists of two components Reconciliation Rescue, an original scripted Blak comedy series, and an accompanying exegesis that situates the work within broader discussions of Aboriginal sovereignty, identity, and the politics of reconciliation. In this article, I extend that research to demonstrate how Aboriginal voices, when centred in comedic storytelling, challenge colonial paradigms and reframe national narratives. Grounded in my lived experience as an Aboriginal woman and my longstanding creative practice, I explore the ways in which Aboriginal humour addresses intergenerational trauma, racism, and stereotypes. I contrast the collectivist values and relational worldviews of Aboriginal cultures with the individualism of Whitestream society, arguing that humour particularly the oration of humorous storytelling has long served as a powerful tool of healing, resilience, and community cohesion. This distinctive form of ‘Blak Humour’ confronts harmful assumptions, empowers our people, and strengthens cultural identity. By reflecting on the development of Reconciliation Rescue and the principles that shape First Nations comedic expression, this article illustrates how Aboriginal comedy can act as an educational and transformative force. It highlights humour’s potential to foster understanding, unsettle entrenched power structures, and contribute meaningfully to more culturally informed and socially just approaches to reconciliation in Australia.

1. Introduction

Aboriginal humour, Blak humour, has long functioned as a crucial source of wellbeing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. I use ‘Blak’ to describe comedy and humour as a tool for truth-telling, education, and resistance. Inspired by Destiny Deacon (Munro 2020), ‘Blak’ reflects self-determination and authentic Aboriginal Australian identity, distinguishing it from ‘Black comedy,’ which is tied to morbid themes. In my doctorate titled, Reconciliation Rescue: An Original Blak Comedy Series and Aboriginal Cultural Perspectives on Humour, I position Aboriginal humour as a distinct genre, comparable to other national humour traditions, with its own expressions, themes, methods, and voice.

Aboriginal humour is present in the quick wit and banter shared around kitchen tables, in the yarns at community gatherings, even with sorry business, and in the belly laughs that sustain families through hardship. Blak humour, has long functioned as a crucial source of strength for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. As our communities have always known, humour far beyond mere entertainment or coping strategy, humour in Aboriginal contexts is an expression of cultural identity, emotional strength, and social connection. Yet despite its profound role in sustaining life, our humour remains one of the least researched areas in Aboriginal studies. Blak humour is more than just laughter it is inherent in our spirit. Emerging from intergenerational storytelling, cultural continuity, and resilience.

This essay explores the significance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander humour as a form of healing and survival. It situates Blak humour as a pillar of cultural, spiritual, social, and emotional wellbeing, demonstrating how humour contributes to resilience in the face of colonisation and ongoing structural inequality. I begin by locating my work within community, grounding the discussion in lived experience, cultural practice, and Aboriginal ways of knowing. From this position, I provide a brief critical overview of existing scholarship on Aboriginal humour, highlighting its limited engagement from Indigenous perspectives. Drawing on my insider knowledge as an Aboriginal researcher and writer, alongside my doctoral research and creative project Reconciliation Rescue: An Original Blak Comedy Series and Aboriginal Cultural Perspectives on Humour (Hurley 2024), the essay then turns to a discussion of key examples of Aboriginal humour, particularly within television and screen comedy, to illustrate how humour operates in practice. Across these examples, humour operates as a strategy of survival and resilience, a means of confronting colonial power, and a practice of cultural endurance, enabling Aboriginal people to strengthen community bonds and affirm cultural continuity.

2. Blak Humour as Strength, Healing and Wellbeing

I am an Aboriginal woman from Brisbane and the Gooreng Gooreng, Mununjali, Birriah, and Gamilaroi nations. With 65,000 years of unceded sovereignty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples represent only 3.8% of the Australian population, encompassing from five to six hundred nations and two hundred and fifty distinct language groups. This rich cultural diversity, shaped and challenged by 237 years of invasion, deeply influences our humour. In the face of centuries of colonisation, dispossession, systemic marginalisation, and cultural genocide, Aboriginal communities have thrived and cultivated humour as both shield and weapon.

My creative and scholarly engagement with First Nations humour is grounded in my identity as an Aboriginal woman. Aboriginal humour, as practised within my family and community, has long functioned as a culturally embedded mode of storytelling, resistance, and survival, transmitted intergenerationally through oral narratives and yarning. This understanding informs both the creative and exegetical components of my work, which draw directly on lived experience and inherited cultural knowledge. Choosing humour as the primary mode of address enabled the articulation of historical hardship and everyday struggle in ways that affirm resilience, relationality, and cultural continuity, while challenging deficit-based colonial representations.

My inspirations extend across family, community, First Nations cultural production, and international comedic traditions shaped by experiences of oppression. Within my family, humour was modelled as a strategy for navigating racism, asserting identity, and reclaiming agency lessons that continue to inform my creative practice. Artistically, my work is influenced by First Nations Australian screen and performance traditions, which demonstrate the capacity of Blak humour to assert sovereignty, critique colonial authority, and educate through laughter. Growing up, I also drew inspiration from satire and stand-up comedy traditions in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Indigenous North America, particularly forms that deploy parody, absurdity, and social critique to confront power, racism, and exclusion. These influences converge in my doctoral project, Reconciliation Rescue, a practice-led investigation into Blak humour as a distinct comedic genre and cultural practice. Aboriginal humour is a distinct genre shaped by historical, social, and cultural circumstances, rooted in language, Country, and community, and functions as a strategic practice of survival, resistance, and cultural assertion that challenges discrimination and critiques colonial systems. Through this work, I aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of Aboriginal humour as a sophisticated form of knowledge production that supports wellbeing, resists erasure, centres Indigenous women’s voices, and communicates complex social truths to diverse audiences.

My practical approach, both in life and research, aligns with that of many First Nations peoples in responding to negative experiences through the vehicle of humour. The effects of post-colonial burnout are real for Aboriginal communities, manifesting as mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion experienced across generations and across political, social, and economic spheres. For me, humour emerges through lived experience and professional practice in fields such as community cultural development, the arts, and education. In these contexts, the phrase I have often said to myself, “there has to be a better way,” underpins the role of humour as an antidote to the frustration of repeatedly confronting structural inequities, guiding me toward more socially just approaches to reconciliation and the public acknowledgment of historical and ongoing injustices.

Many people might dismiss humour as unimportant and trivial. Yet, humour has a history; it embeds knowledge. Blak humour is about truth-telling. Through humour, lessons are learnt, and morals and ethics are taught. My own writing and community engagement underscores the power of Blak humour to sustain our communities and to educate diverse non-Indigenous Australians towards a deeper understanding of Aboriginal life.

Manifestations of humour among Aboriginal people, crucial for survival, healing, and well-being, find expression across various artistic disciplines. Humour teaches, heals, and affirms cultural strength. Within families and communities, humour is woven into daily conversations, teasing, mimicry, and banter, all of which provide moral lessons alongside laughter.

There are historical Western lens accounts, such as Australian anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner’s ([1956] 1982) observations about Aboriginal humour where he suggests that, in humour “evidence[d] among the Aborigines’, he came to recognise how the complex intertwining of humour and truth is one of man’s oldest insights into himself and his situation” (p. 41). Observed is how humour is woven through all aspects of our lives. For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, humour provides cultural continuity that transcends trauma, enabling joy and resilience to persist amidst hardship. Humour and laughter are essential parts of family culture, where discussion allows everyone to express concerns, seek advice, gain wisdom, and follow cultural protocols, while storytelling, jokes, and playful banter affirm the community’s ability to connect with others as a testament to resilience and strength.

There is an emerging body of Aboriginal Australian commentary, adding to the international Indigenous people’s writing, on these matters. Academic, writer, filmmaker, and Indigenous rights advocate Professor Larissa Behrendt, in an article (2013) published in The Guardian, highlights the complex and often intertwined nature of tragedy and comedy in Aboriginal experiences, particularly for people who grew up on government-controlled missions. In acknowledging fellow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women writers Vivienne Cleven, Melissa Lucashenko, Alexis Wright, Terri Janke, and Anita Heiss, Behrendt observes that their writing demonstrates:

“a capacity to weave humour into quite serious stories.”

(Behrendt 2013, para. 8)

In Berendt’s article Sean Choolburra and Kevin Kropinyeri describe humour as essential to survival on missions and reserves. Choolburra, relaying the story of his parents growing up on Palm Island, says:

“You wouldn’t know it was tragic or horrific. My mum, and dad and grandparents would tell all these funny yarns over tea and dampers. Hearing all these, would have thought they had the greatest lived growing up. But you got the sense that they wouldn’t have survived without our sense of humour.”

(in Behrendt 2013, para. 3)

Kropinyeri speaks directly to experience of hardship or going without:

“We have had to learn to look at our situation. We never had much on the mission. My nana would spend three-month periods in gaol for being off the mission without papers. Laughter is healing and is a way of coping with life”.

(in Behrendt 2013, para. 4)

During the 2011 Festival of Ideas in Melbourne, in a forum about Australian Identity and Humour, Ningali Lawford-Wolf spoke about her humour and comedy as a vehicle for the unpalatable. She stated that Australia must acknowledge its Indigenous history and identity and fit in with it. Her experience of ‘white’ humour, mostly deriving from racism, has spurred her on to discover more about what non-Indigenous people know and don’t know about Indigenous Australians. In the process, she wants to educate. Describing her humour as based on other people’s misconceptions, she wants to make people comfortable around hearing more accurate truths:

“People get too caught up in sensitivity…So much has happened to us, that there is nothing else we can do but laugh.”

(YouTube 2011)

Ernie Dingo, a revered Aboriginal actor, television presenter, and comedian hailing from the Yamatji people of Western Australia, is celebrated for his remarkable versatility on screen. His skilful use of humour and comedic style has significantly contributed to his popularity among Aboriginal communities. In discussing familial and community Aboriginal humour, Dingo remarked:

“Aboriginal humour is basically untapped. We laugh at nearly everything; everything is basically a laugh within a story. Even in moments of sadness, Aboriginal humour has a sense of survival. Often it is the only way we get through hard times. We have moments of seriousness but basically an Aboriginal lifestyle is full of humour”.

(cited in McKee 1999, p. 12)

Aboriginal people recognise humour’s significance as a survival tool, preventing them from succumbing to seriousness and negativity. Their mindset and wisdom have served as vital coping mechanisms for multiple generations. Lillian Holt, in a radio interview with Aboriginal filmmaker and musician Richard Franklin (ABC 2007), expressed her appreciation of a humorous story he wrote about fishing, highlighting the art of balancing seriousness with humour with refreshing perspective. Holt emphasises that Aboriginal humour cannot be fully captured and resists easy definition. As one of her case study interviewees explained:

“It’s the only thing that they haven’t stolen from us because we have kept it safe and alive in our hearts” highlighting humour as a vital form of cultural survival.

(Brady 2007)

For my own family and community, humour has soothed grief, diffused conflict, and maintained cultural strength during times when external forces sought our silence. It affirms sovereignty, identity, and belonging, while strengthening mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Humour sustains families and communities across generations, strengthening bonds and affirming identity. It helps people flourish in the most difficult circumstances.

The healing power of Blak humour is highlighted in this essay, where it emerges as a source of unbroken spirit and cultural strength. These qualities are reflected in the lives of many Aboriginal people and resonate deeply within my own family, particularly when recalling their childhoods marked by oppression, poverty, and the dark forces of racism, conditions that, though less overt today, persist through enduring colonial legacies. In my television series (Hurley 2009, 2021, 2024) Aboriginal characters similarly draw on humour to navigate challenging circumstances, finding levity amid tragedy and hardship. Blak humour, then, is recognised not only as a coping mechanism but also as a vital force for education and wholeness within the community.

3. Blak Humour Discourse and Pedagogy

Until my 2024 PhD study, only two academic studies on Aboriginal humour had been undertaken from our perspective. The genre of Aboriginal comedy had been largely under researched by scholars and overlooked, remaining primarily within Aboriginal communities. In the article The Joke’s On Us (Brady 2007), Aboriginal academic Professor Lillian Holt observed that while the impact and history of racism, conflict, and oppression on the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people is well documented, the humour of Aboriginal people which both reflects and speaks back to these colonial afflictions remains one of the least documented topics. Holt began investigating Aboriginal humour at Melbourne University in 2000, but her PhD was not completed. When asked to participate in the making of a documentary on Aboriginal humour, Holt recalls a comment made by a non-Indigenous filmmaker, a ‘white fella’, who said that “in this opinion most white Australians did not equate humour with Aborigines, and would thus find it an intriguing, albeit incongruous theme” (Holt 2009a). Holt laughs at her memory of the filmmaker who mistook his own ignorance for insight, because everything in her lived experience as well as her research highlighted the centrality of humour to Aboriginal life. There has long been evidence of the intersection of our humour and our family environment.

On researching the topic of Aboriginal humour, Holt found a dictionary stating that humour derives from a Latin word ‘umere’ meaning to ‘moisten’ (Holt 2009a, p. 84). I relate to this sentiment as the opposite of being rigid. My contemporary ‘post-colonial’ application of humour in my creative narratives serves roles of self and community survival, affirmation, release from oppression and mitigating the impacts of racism and discrimination correcting misconceptions and deflecting negative stereotypes. Holt also cites De Bono as identifying humour as the most underutilised disciplinary area in western academic education (Holt 2009b) Holt’s perception of Aboriginal people is that they see humour as a shield for sufferings from conflict, and a tool for resolution, used both overtly and covertly. As Holt (2009a) explains, drawing on her case studies undertaken as part of her investigation into Aboriginal humour: “Aboriginal people see the necessity of humour as a tool of everyday existence and narrative and for survival” (pp. 81–94).

Making some strides toward highlighting the significance of Aboriginal humour is Dr Pearl Duncan’s PhD (2014), The Role of Aboriginal Humour in Cultural Survival and Resistance, which explores the weaponisation of humour to combat the effects of colonisation. Through insider research, it shows how humour has adapted from traditional practices to contemporary expressions in literature, theatre, visual art, and film. Duncan investigates the evolution of humour as a weapon against invasion, dispossession, and oppression, and how different genres of humour are used as “strategies of resistance” (Duncan 2014).

Aside from a small number of studies including my own doctoral research, most available work on Aboriginal humour is produced from non-Indigenous perspectives in academia, journalism, and performance reviews. These PhD authored studies by Aboriginal researchers are among the few works that centre insider knowledge and actively challenge colonial discourse. As this brief literature review shows, critical scholarship on Aboriginal humour in Australia remains limited but is growing, highlighting its vital role in truth telling, and resisting stereotypes.

The methodology underpinning my study and creative practice stems from my own lived experience drawing on the tradition of humorous Aboriginal oration, stories, and yarns within my family and community. This approach integrates the wisdom, perspectives, and cultural insights embedded within these stories, allowing for nuances exploration of our narratives within contemporary contests.

A very relatable way for me to research the genre of Aboriginal humour analytically is through exegetical reading of creative practice that implements Aboriginal yarns as itself a creative methodological practice. In these practices, yarning is positioned as both a cultural practice and a research methodology grounded in Aboriginal ways of knowing, centred on storytelling within families, across generations, and throughout communities. Through yarning, humour plays a crucial role in creating culturally safe spaces where knowledge is shared, hardship is processed, power dynamics are challenged, and truths are spoken with care and authority. Rather than privileging individual ownership, yarning sustains collective memory, cultural continuity, and resilience, allowing stories to adapt creatively in response to changing social and political contexts. The methodology affirms oral tradition while also enabling Aboriginal perspectives to engage authentically with contemporary creative forms such as comedy and screenwriting. Although the paper does not focus on detailed case studies or statistical data, it underscores humour within yarning as a powerful mechanism for cultural preservation, truth-telling, and wellness, ensuring the ongoing transmission of Aboriginal knowledge, identity, and spirit to future generations.

Storytelling and yarning remain central Aboriginal pedagogies. Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010) identify types of yarning—social, collaborative, and therapeutic—all of which feature in my own scripts as characters build trust, share trauma, and strengthen community. Bessarab and Ng’andu explain that ‘social yarning’ (p. 37) is important for building and developing trust in relationships. As a less formal mode of research, yarning’s purpose is information sharing. Collaborative yarning occurs between numerous people in my scripts, within which the characters share information as a form of therapeutic yarning, beneficial in dealing with traumatic personal, familial and communal circumstances. Yarning, as our family and community undertake it, tends to be collaborative, and community building, not merely sharing of information. Within this communication, Blak humour plays a key role, creating ease, strengthening bonds, and providing resilience in the face of hardship.

Phillips and Bunda (2018) emphasise storytelling as a professional and pedagogical tool that conveys knowledge across generations and cultures. Storytelling, especially from Aboriginal women’s perspectives, carries moral, ethical, and cultural lessons. Humour, within these practices, allows difficult truths to be spoken in ways that maintain relationships and protocols.

As my thesis presents Aboriginal humour as uniquely emergent from and inherent in Aboriginal experience, it is crucial in my script chapters for Aboriginal perspectives to predominate. In the methodological approaches I have outlined, important frameworks of Aboriginal research practice provide a culturally maintained and secure place in my study of Aboriginal humour and comedy. I emphasise, moreover, that application of decolonising research methods, centring Aboriginal knowledge and knowing, resonates within comedic voicings of Blak humour, where our understandings, perspectives and worldviews are centred. In Reconciliation Rescue, humour becomes a healing practice, catharsis, and a vehicle of truth-telling. Through shared jokes and playful narratives, the characters combat oppression, manage stress, and create safe spaces for emotional release.

In examining the use of humour in contemporary Canadian Native literature, Fagan (2001) states that “Humour is often used as a way of affirming Native community; depicting Native people laughing together shows their social harmony and their shared norms, attitudes, and assumptions”, and that “humour can be a way of tolerating community problems, of controlling others, or of expressing morally complex situations” (p. 18). In my television series Reconciliation Rescue the Aboriginal characters find amusement in the sheer absurdity of the life experiences and situations they encounter, exchanging playful jokes or amusing stories, or employing humour to ease tension and worry. Humour plays a crucial role in fostering a positive atmosphere and a sense of togetherness among the community, especially during times of uncertainty and hardship. Ultimately, it serves as an essential instrument for coping with the trials of everyday life in contemporary Australia while upholding cultural identity and fortitude.

The derision of life and politics resonate with the strong sense of humour shared by First Nations people worldwide. We regularly engage this humour as relevant to our everyday lives and experiences, as my creative script parallels in themes of identity, empowerment, survival, health and well-being, education, truth telling, and reconciliation.

4. Blak Humour as Resistance and Resilience

In Reconciliation Rescue, I use Australia Day as an example of how Blak humour functions as both confrontation and care. Using humour, characters resist invisibility, assert sovereignty, and find collective strength. By mocking colonial absurdities and reclaiming the narrative, humour becomes a tool of empowerment, resilience, and cultural affirmation, offering relief in the face of systemic harm. Australia Day has profound impacts on the Aboriginal psyche, as it represents invasion, mourning, and survival for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, rather than national unity. While many non-Indigenous Australians frame the day as one of celebration and inclusion, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience it as a site of exclusion, erasure, and ongoing racism (see Moreton-Robinson 2015). They identify it as a Day of Mourning and Survival. These tensions can heighten feelings of invisibility, misidentification, and dismissal, all of which negatively affect our collective consciousness.

One of the standout examples of Aboriginal humour, and a personal favourite, is found in the TV sketch show Basically Black (1973). In this skit, the comedy troupe cleverly subverts the colonial narrative, using humour to respond to the arrival of the First Fleet. By flipping the perspective, the performers highlight the absurdity of colonial policies and power structures, as exemplified in the line:

“In the long run, I reckon we’d be better off with a more restrictive immigration policy.”

This comedic reversal not only generates laughter but also functions as a sharp critique of invasion and settler entitlement, demonstrating the capacity of Aboriginal humour to confront historical trauma while asserting agency and cultural voice.

How often does Australia have to be reminded that we were here first? Even White Australia’s attempts at using humour to include First Nations people fail when they forget this basic historical truth. Consider for instance how Meat and Livestock Australia’s 2017 Australia Day advertisement, known as the Lamb Ad (YouTube 2017), misses the mark with an inauthentic portrayal, featuring a barbecue hosted by First Nations Australians. The scene is disrupted by a sudden arrival of ships from various nationalities, all seemingly welcomed without question. Heavily criticised for its efforts to raise lamb sales with cultural stereotypes and the omission of historical truths, the ad, with its awkward echo of the classic beginning to the TV series BabaKiueria (1986), offended First Nations audiences, and the satirical ad campaign fell flat (De Bono 2017).

Colonisation has long been the subject of ridicule by Aboriginal comedians, artists, and creatives, from the television shows Basically Black (1973) and BabaKiueria to renowned theatrical works like Bran Nue Dae (Chi and Chi 1991) and contemporary comedy such as Black Comedy (2014). Basically Black, Australia’s first Aboriginal comedy sketch show and television pilot production on the ABC, combined street theatre, satire, and storytelling to expose racism and assert Aboriginal strength, emerging from Redfern’s activist theatre scene in Sydney. BabaKiueria, a satirical mockumentary, inverted the history of colonisation, imagining Aboriginal people ‘discovering’ and governing white Australians, critiquing systemic inequality with wit that earned a United Nations Media Peace Prize.

Bran Nue Dae the first Aboriginal musical written by playwright, composer and musician Jimmy Chi, humorously follows a young man’s journey home from a missionary school, blending comedy, music, and satire to celebrate resilience while critiquing assimilation policies. The characters narrate the trauma of assimilation experience by numerous First Nations people. Chi’s use of dark humour amplified through the musical format, creates a lively and engaging experience that captivates audiences with its energy, fun, and laughter. The title track, Nothing I Would Rather Be…than to be an Aborigine, becoming a cult favourite and an unofficial Aboriginal anthem across Australia, widely celebrated among First Nations audiences. The 2010 film adaptation, directed by experienced First Nations filmmaker Rachael Perkins, brought this humour and cultural pride to an even broader audience, demonstrating how comedy can entertain while confronting historical and social realities.

Resilient Blak humour is exemplified in the beloved Aboriginal television series Bush Mechanics (2001) produced by the Warlpiri Media Association. Bush Mechanics is a humorous docudrama following a group of Aboriginal men navigating the desert in dilapidated cars, relying on inventive and unorthodox ‘bush mechanic’ skills. Set in Yuendumu and starring local Warlpiri people, the series blends comedy with everyday ingenuity, featuring characters like elder Jack Kackamarra, who introduces each episode, and the master mechanic Jupurrlula, who arrives unexpectedly to solve problems. Much of the humour comes from their outrageous and resourceful solutions, repairing a broken cross member with an axe, tree, and wire; replacing a fuel pump with a wiper washer pump; fixing a cracked radiator by cooking a battery; or using spinifex to stuff a flat tyre, showcasing wit, creativity, and laughter in the face of challenging circumstances, making the humour in Bush Mechanics function as not merely as comic relief, but as an act of survival and resilience.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, humour has been the weapon of choice in combating many colonial celebrations and affirming our sovereignty. Well known is the use of irony, blak humour, ridicule, sarcasm, and parody employed by comedians, humourists, artists, and creatives. Truth-telling the tale of Captain Cook continues, revisited with an Aboriginal comedic hue in the documentary Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky (Screen Australia 2020), co-written and hosted by Aboriginal comedian and actor Steven Oliver.

Similarly, as the productions above demonstrate, the humour in my television series Reconciliation Rescue delves into themes of survival, healing, and well-being, illustrating how Aboriginal humour plays a crucial role in the resilience and recovery of the characters, reflecting broader Aboriginal experiences. Through the narrative and humorous events, viewers are offered a window into the ways humour can transform and redirect challenging circumstances, underscoring its importance in the cultural fabric of Aboriginal communities.

Blak humour consistently exposes colonial absurdities, satirises racism, and transforms shared laughter into a source of resilience, healing, and cultural affirmation. In Reconciliation Rescue, this tradition continues, with Aboriginal characters approaching challenges through a blend of ingenuity and humour, creatively navigating obstacles while maintaining a sense of joy and agency. Such humour, deeply rooted in Aboriginal culture, not only counters negative stereotypes and experiences but also affirms communal bonds, identity, sovereignty, and empowerment.

5. Conclusions

I foreground Aboriginal voices and perspectives in my work to challenge colonial paradigms creatively. Aboriginal humour is presented not as trivial but as a powerful cultural practice; a tool for survival, resilience, and healing; a strategy of resistance and truth-telling; a pedagogy for passing on knowledge and ethics; and a creative force in contemporary storytelling.

The Aboriginal characters in my series Reconciliation Rescue demonstrate the art of deflecting excessive fear and anxiety through humour, showcased as a formidable ally in navigating challenges and fostering resilience within the community. All forms of humorously comedic behaviour, including satire, parody, sarcasm, farce, mimicry, and slapstick, are prevalent amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Aboriginal humour is communal, spontaneous, and part of everyday life.

Blak humour is more than comic relief: it sustains cultural identity, nurtures emotional resilience, and fosters collective survival. For Aboriginal people, humour is not separate from wellbeing; it is wellbeing. We laugh not only to survive, but to thrive. Through this blend of entertainment and cultural insight, I employ Blak humour to entertain, educate, and reframe national conversations about reconciliation. It demonstrates the transformative power of our humour to sustain communities and engage broader audiences with Aboriginal life, sovereignty, and resilience.