After initially downplaying the environmental and social impacts of those tests, the Australian and UK governments conceded in 1994 to a payment of A$13.5 million in compensation to the local Maralinga Tjarutja people.
[5] The research for a planned theatre show on actor/dancer/singer Trevor Jamieson's family brought him and Big hART's creative director Scott Rankin and producer Alex Kelly to the APY Lands where many of the displaced Maralinga Tjarutja people found shelter.
[12] A challenge for Big hART workers and community members involved was to find a suitable framework that would capture the imagination of both old and young and would bring them together in a meaningful exchange.
[14][15] In a series of workshops, artists associated with Big hART developed short film clips on country with a group of youngsters from town camps and remote communities, while elders were providing and advising on the content of the language lessons.
[16] Over the course of the project, this kind of working environment fostered mutual learning that allowed participants to experience themselves and others as creative and productive co-workers as well as helping to reduce the alienation between the generations.
[23] To afford opportunities for the expansion of professional skills, creative developments of the associated theatre show were organised in Ernabella (SA) to give people the chance to observe working processes, to grow and to participate in various capacities on and off-stage, i.e. by joining the multiple tours of the production to national festivals as paid performers or assisting technicians.
The show explores themes of dispossession and displacement from country, home and family,[33] yet within this political constellation, the focus remains firmly on the detrimental impacts the events had on the social fabric and cultural life of the Indigenous people of the region.
[35] The feature of direct participation awards audiences opportunities to learn Pitjantjatjara words and phrases, thus tying-in the show with the language focus of the larger project.
Before jumping into the narrative which spans 60 years of dislocation and emotional trauma, the cast (an Indigenous choir, members of the Jamieson family and a group of non-Indigenous, Australian actors from mixed ethnic backgrounds) teaches the children's song 'Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes' in Pitjantjatjara to the audience.
[37] To strengthen this theme and to open up an emotive space of understanding, the show also makes use of a wide array of popular songs translated into Pitjantjatjara and performed bilingually.
The links established by this narrative eventually all tie in with the family story and serve to turn the abstract, political frame into an intimately personal one in which accountability and impact can no longer be deferred onto the distant and other.
The strain of dislocation and attempts to save as many family members as possible while evacuation measures of the government fall short of communicating over the cultural divide, eventually break up the grandparents' marriage, ending in the murder of the grandmother by the grandfather.
The last third of the show is increasingly interspersed with video footage of intimate family conversations revolving around the worry for Jangala's life in this culturally divided space, bringing the focus back onto the brother and present issues facing the displaced Spinifex people in their country.
[47] The film Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji[48] documents the staging of the theatre show in a creek bed in the remote Indigenous community of Ernabella (SA) in 2008, the negotiation of cultural protocols following the death of Arnold Jamieson and the personal repercussions for the creative team.
[55] A most important legacy of the project according to academic Dave Palmer was that people connected with their culture in a new way, building strong identities and asserting themselves flexibly and successfully in a multicultural context.