It was time to take matters into our own hands, to make our own set. Soon a team of emoji bosses came together,  Joel Liddle Perrule, Veronica Dobson Perrurle and Kathleen Wallace Kemarre. Together we began dreaming of what a set of emojis from Central Australia could look like. A few things became clear, this was a project about language, new and old, and it aimed to involve as many young people.

A few months later, it was the first day of the summer school holidays and we were in the youth corner of the Alice Springs Public Library with a set of iPads and seven weeks of emoji workshops ahead of us, thanks to a Northern Territory Government Youth Activities Grant.

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The library is a very special place in Alice Springs. Young people will tell you it’s one of the few places in town that they feel welcome and safe. Over the last few years it was attracting more and more young people, some from in town, others from remote communities. As numbers grew, it was challenging for library staff, who wanted to meet their needs and create a safe environment for them. And so a program called Geek in Residence began with support from CAYLUS and Centrecorp. It offered a learning space model in the library based around well-being and safety first, and digital access second. Youth workers and artists joined the team, inspiring curiosity and creativity from young people. 

It was the perfect home for our project. 

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Over the 2018-19 summer school holidays, 960 young people participated. The library became a hub of drawing, designing, making, experimenting and discussing language. Many had never used an iPad before. They were mentored by a group of talented local First Nations artists Graham Wilfred Jnr, Phillip McCormack, Emma Stubbs and Colleen Powell, who were in the space all summer thanks to support from inDigiMOB, a digital inclusion partnership between First Nations Media Australia and Telstra. We ended up with hundreds and hundreds of drawings and emoji concepts, many of which you can see on this website alongside the final emojis.

Read more about the full team here.

Indigemoji is now a sticker set of 90 emojis representing life, culture and language of Arrernte Country in Central Australia, closely considered and guided by our emoji bosses. Each has an Arrernte name, the traditional language of Mparntwe/Alice Springs, words we hope you’ll learn. We’ve also developed emojis for special totemic species, either endangered or extinct. An emoji of a bilby or a bandicoot promotes their memory, their name, their places in the landscape where they sprang into existence in the Altyerre and where they moved about on their epic journeys. This way they remain in our landscape.

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This project comes at a critical time of rapid technology uptake and new connectivity in Central Australia. It invites local people to imagine what they could do with these new platforms. How are they not just another colonising force? And how can we embed our languages and culture in them, to make them our own?

The stickers are available for you to use and share through a free app available through the App Store and Google Play. It was launched in November 2019 with a BBQ at Alice Spring Public Library and Indigemoji Disco at Brown Street Youth Drop-in Centre.

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