The playwright and musician behind the acclaimed Australian stage show Bran Nue Dae has died in Broome at the age of 69.
The award-winning writer, who is not named for cultural reasons, was born in 1948 to his Chinese and Japanese father and his Bardi and Scottish mother.
His sister, Maxine Chi, told the ABC her brother had suffered a turn and died in Broome hospital on Monday afternoon.
The writer made enormous contributions to the Australian arts and culture scene, particularly in bringing Indigenous stories and performers to prominence.
In 1990 he wrote the semi-autobiographical musical Bran Nue Dae in collaboration with his band Kuckles. The stage show told the story of a young Aboriginal boy in the late 1960s and, with tongue-in-cheek humour, explored Australia’s frequently racist policies towards Indigenous people, land rights, cultural identity, dispossession and the influence of Christianity on Indigenous communities.
The writer won a 1991 human rights award, the 1997 Australia Council for the Arts’s Red Ochre Award. The 2009 film adaption of Bran Nue Dae, adapted by Rachel Perkins and starring Rocky McKenzie, Jessica Mauboy, Dan Sultan and Ernie Dingo, won a 2010 Deadly award for best film.
His second play, Corrugation Road, which drew on his experiences with mental illness, won the playwright another Deadly award in 1996.
He was named a Western Australian state living treasure in 2004 for his lifetime contribution to arts and culture.
He is survived by his partner and three children.
