Limits On Aboriginal Descent
Blood Quantum Politics Used To Decrease Aboriginal Population
People say, "We need to be able to tell who the real Aborigines are." Notions of Aboriginality determined by skin tone and blood quantum genocidally limit our population.
The Tragic Mulatto
It's the
Tragic Mulatto Myth reversed, twisted into an obscenity that informs national opinion and policy regarding Indigenous descent, until we've reached the stage where a person needs to carry around paperwork to show "proof" of Aboriginal heritage, according to government criteria (see 3 part model). But it's public opinion, rather than policy, that can really make trouble for people of "mixed ancestry", particularly if their Aboriginal ancestry is deemed "distant".
Defined By Outsiders
You often hear people protesting about the light skin tone of Indigenous leaders like Geoff Clarke, who asks, "Will non-Indigenous Australia continue to determine if we are `too black' or `too white'?".
"But there has to be a cut-off point," they respond, meaning a set limit on the minimum percentage of "blood" a person must have to claim Aboriginality.
Not that there's much point "claiming" this anyway - who the hell would be interested in identifying with the most unhealthy, poor, uneducated, abused social group in society if they had any choice otherwise? Speaking for myself, I would swap for a dominant culture identity in a heartbeat if I had the choice to. My Aboriginality has never brought me anything but pain, loss, abuse and struggle.
Double Standards For Ancestral Claims
So what of this "cut-off" point? In the European dominant culture, the cut-off is never, when it comes to claiming descendance from a noble family, or in connection with an estate. A deceased ancestor's great great great great great great great great grand niece is entitled to inherit their estate, if they are the only surviving relative.
But apparently, this rule doesn't apply to Indigenous people. There can only be two reasons for this, both sinister.
The first reason would be an assumption that Indigenous "blood" is somehow weaker than that of people from other ethnicities. But seeing genetic science has proven no variation between cultural groups biologically, then this is untenable.
The second reason is more viable. Genocide. If you place a limit on ancestral links for any group in society, then you just have to wait a couple of centuries and BOOM - that people is "extinct". The ancestors remain, but are no longer admitted to the social group, which withers and dies. (There is an alternative to this - Apartheid - but this has proven to be ineffective in other contexts, to say the least.)
Really, this second reason can be the only possible reason for people to want to impose limits on Aboriginal descent - limits that don't apply to anybody else in the world.
"Reasoning" Behind Calls For A Cut-off
Common arguments include:
- "But then how will we be able to tell the real Aborigines?" Real? Get real. We know who we are. Why do you need to know? The only reason could be to make it easy to target us for abuse or for ministration of your "services", which is the same thing. The sooner we all look the same the better, if you ask me. Then we might be free to pursue our Indigenous ways in peace, while suffering less abuse in the wider community.
- "But we need to stop people fraudulently claiming Aboriginality just to get the benefits." This position is also untenable. To find out why, reread the third paragraph of this article, and check out the related blog, Benefits Of Aboriginality.
- "But Aboriginal people are too trusting. Whites claiming Indigenous descent will steal their culture!" See Appendix One for my response to this.
- "But people will use descent to claim positions and awards reserved for real Aborigines." Well. Anybody who is stupid enough to do that will soon find that their initial accolades wear off fast, leaving them saddled with an identity that excludes them from any further successes for the rest of their life. The crime itself produces the punishment.
My Own Struggle For Identity
To find out more about my identity difficulties as a pale-skinned Aborigine, check out my blog Strange Murri , as well as the article Nowhere People .
For story about this that is a bit more personal, check out the blog Eel Dreaming .
This is the nexus of a web of texts I have put together over the last couple of weeks so that I will have something to refer people to when they question me about my confusing identity. Hope it is helpful. It will be helpful to me - I expend too much energy justifying my existence to outraged and abusive European Australians.
But people who are difficult to categorise culturally and "racially" have always been villified in western society. And this is not just a thing of the past. Check out the picture for this article - from the dvd cover of a contemporary horror flick named for its featured monster - "Half-caste".
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Appendix 1 - The Other Side Of The Argument
There have been some very good arguments made against what I am saying. The best Indigenous argument is from Jackie Huggins, which you can read about in my article, Right To Self-identify The best non-Indigenous argument I have read is by Rosemary van den Berg , who argues that proof is necessary to stop unscrupulous poor "whites" ripping off Indigenous Intellectual Property. However, I do object to the picture she paints of "gullible natives", and I can't see how she can justify doing so much to "protect" communities from a handful of poor criminals, when the ravages of the marauding giant corporate bioprospectors dwarf this small-time theft with blatant piracy of Indigenous intellectual property, unchecked.
Why put such genocidal limits on descent claims to protect the "too-trusting natives" from a few small crooks, when the majority of real crimes against humanity are being committed on a grand scale by government departments and the juggernaut of dominant culture, as proven in reports by the UN and Amnesty International? Are these problems not just a little bit more important?
So why the rabid compulsion to define and regulate Aboriginality in the name of "protecting" us? See reasons 1 and 2 in this article.
Appendix 2 - Rulings In Support Of Right To Self-Identify
The Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW submitted that:
The central issue is ... whether it is appropriate to use genetic information to determine community, racial and ethnic affiliation. This is a question better answered by Indigenous communities themselves. We are concerned that should a purely genetic approach to community, racial and ethnic affiliation be adopted, it is conceivable that people who identify as Indigenous and are accepted within Indigenous communities as Indigenous may be refused access to Indigenous services programs and benefits, which were specifically designed to address disadvantage of Indigenous people.
And finally, this ruling from His Honour J. Merkel, stating that:
Aboriginality as such is not capable of any single or satisfactory definition ... That some descent may be an essential legal criterion required by the definition in the Act is to be accepted. However in truth, the notion of 'some' descent is a technical rather than a real criterion for identity, which after all in this day and age, is accepted as a social, rather than a genetic, construct.
