Yesterday, today, tomorrow

There’s a particular story that Nukunu man Dr Jared Thomas often tells in interviews like these. It’s a memory from when he was sixteen, a school boy visiting Adelaide from his Port Augusta home.

While Jared and his classmates were waiting outside a theatre to see a play, two Aboriginal men in the line ahead were approached first by a security guard and then police, who told them to move on, that ‘the pub was around the corner.’ When the Aboriginal men stood their ground, presenting their tickets, they were forced out of line by the police and out of sight of the other patrons.

Inside the theatre, the lights came up on those same two Aboriginal men standing on stage. ‘They said “Welcome to our town, we’re going to show you everything that happens here. Unfortunately you’ve already seen some of it out the front”,’ recalls Jared. ‘But then they said “Why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you say anything?” I was just sitting there like I’d been struck by lightning.’

The overt racism shown by the security guard and the police was nothing new to Jared. But the challenge issued by the two men on stage and what followed – a performance in which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people worked together to address racism – was. ‘And I was like: that’s it. That’s what I need to do,’ he says.

Jared retells this story via video call from a hotel room in Aeotearoa / New Zealand. He’s nearing the end of a seven-week trip that’s also taken him through Finland, Norway, Canada and the United States on a Churchill Fellowship. As the South Australian Museum and University of South Australia Research Fellow, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Material Culture and Arts, Jared took up the fellowship as a chance to find inspiration – both practical and philosophical – for his plans to revamp the permanent Aboriginal exhibits at the SA Museum. Finding himself in the role of museum curator was, at the time, an unexpected career move for Jared. But the path that sixteen-yearold Jared first stepped onto as he walked out of that theatre has led, inexorably, to this place; a path that’s paved with stories, both his own and those of others.

Jared started his career telling stories on the stage, writing two plays: Flash Red Ford and Love, Land and Money. Later, he turned to writing young adult fiction and children’s books, including Sweet Guy, Calypso Summer and My Spare Heart. His latest book for young readers, titled Uncle Xbox, is set on the Fleurieu and will be published in 2023.

At the same time, Jared worked to create space for other Aboriginal voices and stories. He spent two stints working at Arts South

Australia, bisected by a period spent lecturing and completing his PhD in creative writing.

Working at the SA Museum exposed Jared to a different challenge. He admits to feeling frustration with the form of the museum’s Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery. ‘When I look at those objects, the meaning behind them is so rich when you look at what they tell you about culture – a very sophisticated culture – and ingenuity, and Aboriginal people as scientists, and about the knowledge systems in place,’ he says.

But that’s not necessarily the story these objects communicate. ‘Because of how they’re presented, they make it seem like we’re in the stone age,’ Jared continues. He refers to a theorist who talks about Aboriginal people being being represented in museums as ‘over there’ and ‘back then people.’ ‘That’s how we’re represented in museums, rather than: we’re right here, now and we have a future. A big part of what I want to do is to facilitate Aboriginal people being front and centre of their own storytelling and to talk about how we’re still here and we’re future thinking.’

His experiences at overseas galleries offered insight into how other indigenous, black and minority ethnic stories are being centred in cultural institutions. Jared was struck by both the deep and terrible truths that the National Museum of African American History and Culture displayed alongside great hope and joy. It redoubled Jared’s own commitment to curating stories that reckon with the reality of shared history on this continent. ‘I want to tell positive stories,’ he says, ‘but you have to tell it all.’

As Jared imagines what could be created here, as part of the work he will do in a new role at Lot 14 in Adelaide, he envisages a place of shared pride that tells Indigenous stories of the past, present and future. He cites the Egyptian pyramids (which, for the record, were built around 4,500 years ago) as an example of how Aboriginal stories are marginalised. ‘In the mid-north of South Australia, in my great-grandmother’s country, Ngadjuri country, there’s petroglyphs that are 25,000 years old. They’re amongst the first forms of communication on the planet,’ Jared says. ‘Those stories aren’t told, we just have so far to go.’

After New Zealand, Jared will return home to Aldinga Beach with his wife Anita Nedosyko and baby daughter Banksia who have travelled with him for the full seven weeks. He’s also been joined by his older daughters Delilah and Tilly for this last leg. Being so close to the end of his trip, he can begin imagining the return home to the community they’ve found on Kaurna land on the mid-coast. And also the opportunities ahead to support the amplification of Aboriginal stories. To find new and meaningful ways to, as Jared puts it, ‘tell the greatest story never told.’