Jack Charles

Jack Charles (1943–2022) was a revered Wiradjuri, Boon Warrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, Woiwurrung and Yorta Yorta Elder, activist, actor, musician and artist. A Stolen Generations survivor, Charles used his creativity and humour to share honest truths about the impact of government policies on his community, and was a tireless advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people caught up in the prison system. Born at the Cummeragunja Mission on the Murray River, Charles was taken from his mother when he was four months old. Raised in a boy’s home in Melbourne, he was seventeen when he was jailed for the first time, his heroin habit and resort to petty theft seeing him in and out of prison for decades. He became involved in acting in the early 1970s and in 1972 he co-founded Australia’s first Aboriginal theatre group, Nindethana. ‘We want to do plays where the Aboriginal actors will play ordinary people – a milkman, a postman – because Aborigines do these jobs,’ Charles explained. He subsequently had roles in the television series Ben Hall, Rush, Gods of Wheat Street, Cleverman, Black Comedy, Play School, Wolf Creek and Preppers and the films The chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Blackfellas, Tracey Moffatt’s Bedevil, Mystery Road and Pan. The 2008 documentary, Bastardy, chronicled his experiences of homelessness, crime and addiction as well as his transition ‘from a rogue and a vagabond to a person of note and a role model in my community’. From 2010 to 2018, he toured the world with his one-man autobiographical work, Jack Charles v The Crown, which won a Helpmann Award. He received the Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 and the following year released his memoir Jack Charles: Born-again Blakfella. Named NAIDOC Male Elder of the Year in 2022, he was the first Elder to speak at the Victorian Truth-telling Commission.