A strong and formidable brow protrudes over dark, deep brown eyes; eyes of an uncle with wisdom, a jovial spark gleams at their corners. These eyes connect to an activist soul and to a voice that is being heard.

Uncle Jack Charles, 71, is a respected Aboriginal elder around the city streets of Melbourne, particularly over the north side, where he has resided for many years. He is also a pint-sized dynamic actor with a humble presence and a direct bloodline that extends back at least 60,000 years from the lands of the Boonwurrung and the Wurundjeri, regions in the state now known as Victoria.

Often described as the grandfather of Indigenous theatre, Charles, along with the late Bob Maza, father of well-known actor and theatre-maker Rachael Maza Long, set up the nation’s first Indigenous theatre company in 1971 in Melbourne. They named it Nindethana, meaning “place for a corroboree” or “ours”.

They had great success with a play devised and acted by Charles, called Jack Charles is Up and Fighting. A year later, still excited about the general public’s reaction to his play, Charles felt confident enough to audition for a television series titled Boney.

Unsurprisingly, in the ’70s there was no respect in the industry for Indigenous Australians, despite the right to vote being awarded across all states by 1965. The attitude that had led to their classification as “flora and fauna” by non-Indigenous Australians persisted, and Charles was not successful in obtaining the starring role of an Aboriginal Australian in Boney. The role was given to an actor of Sri Lankan background.

Despite ongoing challenges, Charles appeared in several movies, including The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Blackfellas (1993), Bedevil (1993) and Tom White (2004). Later the actor would cement his name in history as one of the “greats”, when his theatre and film work went international.

Charles is jet-lagged and still reeling from a cameo where he plays an Indigenous elder in the upcoming Warner Brothers Peter Pan prequel Pan, currently filming in London. He walks out of rehearsals for Ilbijerri Theatre Company and Belvoir’s Coranderrk, in inner city Northcote, to light a hand-rolled cigarette and have a yarn.

“We insist,” he directs his words to mainstream Australia, “we insist you know our story of resistance and of our warriors. We just insist you know it,” he says without a skerrick of disdain.

Coranderrk is the story of the Aboriginal community mob of Coranderrk mission, set on the outskirts of what is now known as Healesville, Victoria. It was a self-sustaining, determined and vibrant community, in which the men and women of Coranderrk created a revitalised farming life. And when the government moved to shut it down, they were met with an unexpected resilience.

Here began a revolutionary fight for basic justice. A Victorian parliamentary inquiry was opened and saw the mob of Coranderrk take on the Aboriginal Protection Board, in 1881.

“My great-great-grandfather, John Charles, was at Coranderrk,” says Charles, who first learned about this piece of family history through the seminal SBS series First Australians, as well as the Koorie Heritage Trust.

“I had never had a great-great anything … so I was excited when I found out about him.”

Charles was taken from his mother at Cummeragunja mission when he was just a year old and raised in a boys’ home based in Boxhill. He was the only Aboriginal child there for many years and the feelings of rejection and isolation were intense.

He would not meet another Aboriginal person until singer/songwriter Uncle Kutcha Edwards and his brothers turned up at the boys’ home. Charles says they had another fella with them by the name of Arthur Charles.

At the time Arthur said to him, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we were brothers?”

Turns out, they were.

Then at 17, Charles headed out one night for a drink at the Builders Arms in Fitzroy, and discovered a big mob of his blood family. People ran up to him saying: “this is your aunty,” and “I’m your cuzo!”

“I was elated!” he says, “I felt like I’d entered another world! I ran home to tell my foster mother, who didn’t share my enthusiasm at all.”

“You can’t believe a word they say,” she said to a young Charles.

“I do believe them,” he replied, and there began his journey with his people.

Two years later Charles was reunited with his biological mother.

Alongside his acting, Charles would also become a raging heroin addict, robber, prison inmate and then methadone addict.

The actor outlines the boundaries of the Kulin Nation, which was told to him by Boonwurrung Elder Aunty Carolyn Briggs. Charles says such boundaries were set by his ancestral tribe and encompass Toorak and Brighton, “where all those mansions are; they’re the ones I used to rob to support my heroin habit … oh the irony,” he grins.

Breaking into acting at age 19, while living in a hostel in Cunningham Street, Northcote, Charles finally found something he enjoyed.

“[The New Theatre group] came to the hostel I was staying at and asked if any of us would like to be in a play; I was the only one that raised my hand. Before this I was doing my apprenticeship as a glass beveller.”

“I was with them for seven years; they were my NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art), and were like a family to me.”

Having done the crimes and served the time (on numerous occasions), Charles has mellowed in his early 60s and become a calm, centred and strong role model for a new generation of youths drowning under waves of present day institutionalised racism, a lack of connection to culture and a western way of life that sits at odds with the needs of the soul.

“When I came out of jail this last time [about 10 years ago], I came out a self-proclaimed ‘lore’ man. I knew I had knowledge to share,” he says with a puff of his smoke and a warm embrace.

• Coranderrk is playing at Northcote Town Hall from 15-23 August.
  

CORRECTION: A reference to a national referendum and date for the right to vote was incorrectly listed as 1967. 15/08/14