Harold Joseph Thomas (Bundoo) was born in 1947 to a Wombai father and Luritja mother in Alice Springs, Northern Territory.

[2] 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.

[9] 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.

[2] In 2016 his painting Tribal Abduction, a scene of an Aboriginal baby being torn from their mother's breast by police, depicting a scene relating to the Stolen Generations (of which he is a member,[5]) won the top prize of A$50,000, the Telstra Art Award, in the 33rd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAAs).

Thomas refused to allow Google to use the image featuring the flag after negotiations over compensation failed.

[17] One of these companies, WAM Clothing, issued infringement notices to various organisations, including the AFL, NRL, and Aboriginal non-profits.

[19][18] On 25 January 2022, after three years of negotiation, Thomas assigned the copyright of the flag to the Commonwealth of Australia, in a deal that makes it free for public use by anybody.

[22] 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.