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; , 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. History At the point of the first colonisation, Indigenous Australians had not developed a system of writing, so the first literary accounts of Aboriginal people come from the journals of early European explorers, which contain descriptions of first contact. A letter to Governor Arthur Phillip written by Bennelong in 1796 is the first known work written in English by an Aboriginal person. While his father, James Unaipon (c.1835-1907), contributed to accounts of Ngarrindjeri mythology written by the missionary George Taplin in South Australia, David Unaipon (1872–1967) provided the first accounts of Aboriginal mythology written by an Aboriginal person, Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines (1924–5), and was the first Aboriginal author to be published. The Yirrkala bark petitions of 1963 are the first traditional Aboriginal document recognised by the Australian Parliament. Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993) was a famous Aboriginal poet, writer and rights activist credited with publishing the first Aboriginal book of verse: We Are Going (1964). There was a flourishing of Aboriginal literature from the 1970s through to the 1990s, coinciding with a period of political advocacy and focus on Indigenous Australian land rights. Sally Morgan's 1987 memoir My Place brought Indigenous stories to wider notice. In the same year, Magabala Books, an Indigenous-owned enterprise, published its first book. In 1988, the David Unaipon Award was established by the University of Queensland Press, to reward and encourage new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers. However a conservative backlash occurred under John Howard's government (1996 to 2007), causing a period of decline for Aboriginal publishing that was to last until the mid to late 2010s. Contemporary literature Wiradjuri writer and academic Anita Heiss has edited a collection of