Returning: Deadly Awards

Actor Aaron Pedersen and singer Casey Donovan will host the Deadly Awards next month on SBS ONE.

Now in its 17th year, it celebrates Indigenous excellence in fields such as the arts, sport, fashion (as seen on the red carpet), education, health, employment, cultural advancement and leadership.

There will also be performances from Donovan, Troy Cassar-Daley, The Last Kinection, the Pigram Brothers and Shellie Morris and the Yanyuwa Singers.

This year’s Deadlys has it all – glamour, humour, music and fun. It has fashion divas, footy legends, pop princesses and pole dancers!

But the awards also have a serious side – the paying of respects to sporting legends of the past and the honouring of the nation’s ‘quiet achievers’ in Indigenous health, education and employment.

As the anticipation builds to find out who has been the most deadly in 2011, finalists include names like Aaron Fa’Aoso, who is nominated for Male Actor of the Year award for his outstanding performance in SBS’sEast West 101 series three, and Living Black, up for Most Popular Television Show of the Year.

“We’ve got a story to tell to wider Australia, and we tell it loud and proud on Deadly’s night,” Executive Producer Gavin Jones says.

“We started out as a small awards ceremony at Boomali Art Cooperative in Redfern in 1995 and have grown into a huge showcase of Indigenous talent at the Opera House. And even after 16 years of organising this event, I am still humbled by the support we get from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the wider Australian community for the Deadlys.”

So for a fast-paced night of entertainment, glitz, glamour and grass-roots musicianship that is uniquely Australian be watching the 2011 Deadlys only on SBS.

Sunday, 2 October at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.