The Kate Challis RAKA Award is one of Australia's most valuable and prestigious national awards for Indigenous creative artists, and has been instrumental in fostering writers, filmmakers and visual artists for over a decade. 2007 sees the Award grow to $25,000, making it one of the richest awards for Indigenous creative artists. The scope of the Award is unique in its recognition of the importance of creative work across a range of different media - creative prose, drama, the visual arts, script-writing and poetry - and its awarding of an annual prize to Indigenous artists in these designated art forms on a five year cycle. The RAKA Award is also historically important, because it predates other prizes for Indigenous creative endeavour. In 1989, Professor Emeritus Bernard Smith, eminent art historian and one of Australia's leading public intellectuals, made a gift to the Australian Centre to establish the Award in honour of his late wife, Kate Challis. The Award reflects the long-standing interest of Kate Challis in Indigenous Australian culture.
