Harold Thomas

Harold Joseph Thomas (born 1947), also known as Bundoo, is an Aboriginal Australian artist and former activist, known for designing and copyrighting the Australian Aboriginal flag. He claims to have designed the flag in 1971 as a symbol of the Aboriginal land rights movement, and in 1995 it was made an official "Flag of Australia". After this, his assertion of copyright over his design was upheld by the Federal Court, eventually transferring that copyright to the Commonwealth of Australia and making it freely available for public use in January 2022.

Early life and education Harold Joseph Thomas (Bundoo) was born in 1947 to a Wombai father and Luritja mother in Alice Springs, Northern Territory. He was one of 13 children but the family did not all live under one roof as the children were taken from there at different stages. He remembers drawing and painting on pieces of paper from an early age.

At seven years old, he was removed from his family as part of the Stolen Generations and was taken to St Francis House, in South Australia, where he lived until he was eleven. He was later fostered by Reverend Donald Wallace and his family, who enroled him at Willunga High School. He attended an Adelaide independent school, Pulteney Grammar.

In 1966, aged 17, Thomas won a scholarship to study at the South Australian School of Art, graduating with Honours in 1969, becoming the first Aboriginal person to graduate from an Australian art school. He changed his subject matter and style dramatically in 2016, when he started painting representations of Aboriginal people's first and subsequent contact with European colonisers, including the frontier wars. The Australian Aboriginal flag as designed by Harold Thomas.

Australian Aboriginal flag

Thomas says he designed the flag in 1970 to lead a demonstration at the NADOC (now NAIDOC) march. The outcome was that he was declared the copyright owner of the flag's design, according to copyright law of Australia.

In 2010 Thomas was involved in a dispute with Google over its intended use of a 12-year-old Australian girl's artwork incorporating the Australian Aboriginal flag into its logo. Thomas refused to allow Google to use the image featuring the flag after negotiations over compensation failed. Thomas claimed that Google had opened negotiations with a request for free use of the flag and, while he allowed free use to non-commercial operations that gave health, educational, legal and other assistance to Aboriginal people, he charged a fee to commercial operations.

Thomas went on to give exclusive commercial rights to three companies, "one to reproduce flags, and the others to reproduce the image on objects and clothing". One of these companies, WAM Clothing, issued infringement notices to various organisations, including the AFL, NRL, and Aboriginal non-profits.

On 21 December 2021 Thomas created the authentic digital representation of the flag, minted as a non-fungible token (NFT) to commemorate the 50th year of the flag. He said he hoped that the democratisation of the flag would "provide comfort to all Aboriginal people and Australians to use the flag".

Other work In 1972, Thomas illustrated Tales told to Kabbarli: Aboriginal legends collected by Daisy Bates (stories collected by author Daisy Bates, retold by Barbara Ker Wilson). He also did the illustrations for Jagardoo: Poems from Aboriginal Australia (1977), by Jack Davis, and Kurkali the Lizard (1994), a children's picture book by Charlie Stream.

In 1973-4, he produced and directed a mythological play called Pelicans Dream. 2017: Myal Creek Massacre, a painting depicting the 1838 Myall Creek massacre in New South Wales, selected as a finalist in the NATSIAA Awards

Personal life Thomas has lived in Humpty Doo in Northern Territory, near Darwin, since the 1990s.

Selected exhibitions 1986: New Works, Framed Gallery, Darwin, Northern Territory 1987: Northern Light, Birukmarri Gallery, Fremantle 1990: group exhibition, Balance 1990: Views, Visions, Influences, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane 1991: prints, at Tandanya, Adelaide, South Australia 1991: prints, at Sydney Opera House 1993: 10th NATSIAA exhibition, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory; "Bungalo Boy" purchased by the museum