At 10:01 PM 10/15/00 +1000, you wrote:
>aboriginal is always an adjective.
>the noun is aborigine. or Aborigine.
Not so, in my experience. Many Kooris I know use the word "Aboriginal" as
a noun. I read in an old edition of the Britannica that "aborigine" was
first used by the Romans to label the Etruscan people who occupied the land
that Rome was built on. Latin: ab -- from; origine -- the original.
I have a personal aversion to the word "Aborigine", which I recognise from
my childhood. For me it carries a taint of imposed inferiority. It is
also a trap -- a white box, an imposed, alien view of the world as
well. It is a word that is difficult to avoid using, particularly with
other Kooris, who would immediately take a statement that one was not
"Aboriginal" as to mean that I was one of the "other" -- ie nonAboriginal.
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jim Duffield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Lynn Pollack" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "DAUGHTER"
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Leonard M Collard"
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
>"DEMSEN" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2000 8:05 PM
>Subject: Re: John Bond response
>
>
>On 14 Oct 2000, at 16:20, Lynn Pollack wrote:
>
> > Thanks, Lynn. I am glad to read Jim's comment, but I don't know how to
> > explain past policy without using terms which denote people whose ancestry
> > includes non-Aboriginals. Because that was the basis on which the
> > Government policy was determined. That is one of the issues at the heart
>of
> > the stolen generations struggle for justice. In the court case, the
> > Government's lawyers argued that they were removed not because of their
>race
> > but for their welfare.
> >
> > I would never use the term 'half-caste'. In our media release, we used it
> > as a direct quote from the Northern Territory's Director of Native Welfare
> > in 1950. It was needed, to make a powerful point about the attitudes of
>the
> > authorities of the time.
> >
> > If Jim (or you) have any suggestions on how we can explain past policy
> > using different terminology, I would be glad to hear. Feel free to pass
> > this on.
> >
> > Gratefully,
> >
> > John
> >
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
>
>Yes, thank you for the opportunity, and some will forgive me for restaing
>my case. I know the problem, and its not just political correctness, white
>armband history?
>
>Recently I circulated this:
>
>On 7 Oct 2000, at 17:42, Liz Grant wrote:
>
> > As a recent subscriber to this forum relating to Indigenous issues it is
> > of grave concern ot me the use of language within the text of meesages.
> > There are two glaring examples which were of relevance. Firstly the
> > respondents referred to a so-called Aboriginal culture - are there not
> > many Aboriginal cultures and many sub-cultures in between? Being
> > simplistic and referring to one culture is patronising. The other
> > comment was one more of political correctness in the use of capitals for
> > the terms Indigenous and Aboriginal. These are not terms used as
> > adjectives in these examples but as a noun and in a show of respect
> > should always be upper case. In the terminology Indigenous seemed to be
> > slotted in where Torres Strait Islander becomes too wordy. Few
> > Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander organisations or communities
> > suscribe to the Indigenous term - let it go. Liz Grant Adelaiode
> > University
>
>Hmm...
>Yes, this becomes a little problematic. Aboriginal and Torres Strait
>Islander (clumsy) becomes ATSI (Uch!) Certainly. there can be no doubt
>about capitalisation. Is a person English or english, Greek or greek? No
>argument.
>
>However, the term Aboriginal, also (I?)indigenous, is an imposition of the
>now dominant society. In numbers of papers I've used the term
>Indigenous (capitalised) because of the Judeo-Christian root patronisingly
>becomes a part of colonising imperative, theological imperialism? (Aba -
>from the Hebrew - father as in Ab-original).
>
>But, lately I've begun to use First Nations, in recognition of the vast
>variety that did, and to some extent continues on this continent because
>of the number of red-necks I've encountered who also claim indigenaity as
>they were born in Australia! Oxford is not a little dissonant.
>
>And now I seem to be using the term Fourth World interspersed within the
>First Nations as it has a clear United Nations Definition (Reid, J. and
>Trompf, P. (ed.) (1991). The Health of Aboriginal Australia. Marrickville:
>Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: p. xiii).
>
>"Dispossession and ill health: the fourth world experience
>
>Fourth world communities are characterised by their experience of being
>colonised or of being a minority in relation to the dominant, encompassing
>state. Many have been forced to assimilate, losing most of their land and
>their economic base, and therefore their autonomy. The United Nations uses
>the working definition of fourth world or indigenous populations as:
>
>...composed of the existing descendants of the peoples who inhabited the
>territory of a country wholly or partially at the time when persons of a
>different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the
>world, overcame them and, by conquest, settlement or other means, reduced
>them to a non-dominant or colonial situation; who today live more in
>conformity with their particular social, economic and cultural customs and
>traditions than with the institutions of the country of which they now
>form a part, under a state structure which incorporates mainly the
>national, social and cultural characteristics of other segments of the
>population which are dominant. ICIHI 1987, p . 7
>
>Fourth world communities exist within first world countries (for example,
>Aborigines, Basques, Bretons, Maoris and Native Americans), second world
>countries (such as the indigenous peoples of northern USSR) and third
>world countries (such as the indigenous peoples of Central and South
>America). (0'Neil 1986, pp. 119-20). " My note: - (i)ndigenous?)
>
>All this notwithstanding, we are probably discussing the polite way of
>addressing people(s) anywhere. After being wed to a McDougall for thirty
>plus years, I've learned not to call some Scots - Scot(ish), and some not
>Scots at all but Highlanders!
>
>I guess it comes down to good manners, If a person wants and prefers to be
>called a "Something" - I do just that, and I capitalise it as a proper
>noun.
>
>In thought....
>
>Then this....
>
>On 7 Oct 2000, at 22:44, Lisa Chaplin wrote:
>
> > At 17:15 7/10/00 +0800, you wrote:
> > >On 7 Oct 2000, at 17:42, Liz Grant wrote:
>
>snip
>
> > It's the same with English culture. We call them all English, but
> > someone from Cornwall would say he/she has a completely different
> > culture to someone from Yorkshire. Same with Americans, New York against
> > New Orleans, yet "Yanks" they all are to many (I've been guilty of that
> > myself - thanks for helping me realise that). Scots, Highlanders against
> > Lowlanders, French, Germans from different regions - don't we categorise
> > them?
>
>This is so true, and a bit of a tale ensues to make the point. It is
>perhaps part of the kernel that first prompted my concern and activities
>with the First Nations of this continent. Its got nothing to do with
>"political correctness" (black-armband or Howardesque Oz?).
>
>I was born in a Nazi camp of parents deported from Jersey in the Channel
>Isles. I was raised to speak three languages; Jerraise (Jersey or Norman
>Patois), French and English. In Patois, the tongue is very geospecific.
>In only forty-eight square miles of island there are perhaps four or five
>distinct dialects, as an example, four different words for an acorn - the
>seed of the oak tree, and polite and impolite specific language terms for
>conversations with both one's elders and juniors. From this I have some
>grasp of the subtleties of Australian First Nations languages and
>senior/junior/clan/kin relationships, even though I now know only a few
>words of Nyungah (also Nyungar, Noongar, Nyoongar) as languages or patois
>of the once named Bibbulmen of South-West of WA.
>
>The prehistory and written history of Jersey is discernible back some
>30,000 years through various dolmen and tombs, through the invasion of
>England by the Normans in 1066 (Jersey people believe therefore that they
>own England!), the imprisonment of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the hosting on
>the island, during his exile, of the Duke of Normandy who later became King
>Charles II, and this does not preclude me from being a Republican!
>
>I migrated to Oz in 1963 and served in the Australian Army for over 20
>years. Nonetheless, on every occasion when I begin to introduce myself to
>a new acquaintance, people insist on calling me "Pommie." Its no term of
>endearment I assure you. I may have been, and maybe still am a Jerseyman,
>a Norman, a Breton Islander (and perhaps still am), but I most certainly
>consider myself to be an Australian, albeit a settler or migrant of that
>ilk.
>
>There can be little worse and more demeaning than attribution of
>"political correctness" to a strongly held belief about and of oneself.
>One may be "wrong" or "poorly briefed" or "unlearned" or "uneducated"
>about a subject, but one cannot be so maligned as to be told of oneself
>that you and all you believe and know of yourself is to be only
>"politically correct."
>
>That we settlers, after some two centuries of the occupation of this
>continent, are now only just engaging the First Nations in their ideas of
>self and their description of their ideas of self is an indication that
>Australia is only just now beginning to understand that there is even a
>post colonial experience. From this, therefore, a colonial yolk and
>experience which we yet have to discard.
>
>I find that Ashis Nandy is the major source for my chewing gum of the
>brain, see:
>
>http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/NANDY.HTM
>http://www.ipcs.org.au/index.html
>
>A man of some discernment, he wrote The Tao of Cricket, see:
>
>http://www.ausport.gov.au/fulltext/1999/sportsf/s72171.htm
>
>So after all this how do we get around part-Aboriginal? I was, of course
>familiar with the term for many years and thought not a lot about it until
>a Nyungar friend of mine asked a Lawyer to speak with me about some event.
>When he called he said, "Oh Mr Duffield, I've just been speaking to a part-
>Aboriginal woman..." And it hit me, how demeaning, in at least two ways:
>
>* Which part of her was Aboriginal, and therefore what of the other part,
>and
>
>* I'll bet had she been white he would have used the noun Lady.
>
>Aside from my explosion over the line, I began to consider the implications
>and history of the language used, notwithstanding the culture of the LLB.
>
>It, of course sources itself in the 1800s and is tied to Social-Darwinism
>and Eugenics. We still see in the WA Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority
>Act (1972), amended 1991, the language:
>
>"descended from the original inhabitants of Australia, of the full blood,
>half-caste, quarter caste, octaroon or heptaroon..."
>
>The question begs, what is and empty blood? Then the many "blood"
>attributions in describing people, especially the First Nations of this
>continent. Yes, the term part-Aboriginal is of this era, mindset and
>English language use. Further, it is also of many English translations of
>the Christian Bible, where the "blood" looms large in the psyche.
>
>So, I had to think about the use of the term "race" in all its
>connotations, and I'm now disciplining myself to not uese the term except
>in inverted commas. It has no meaning in science and is only reified on
>each use. Hence, we need not a "Race" discrimination Act, but a
>Discrimination Act!
>
>I recommend:
>
>Husband, C. (1992). 'Race' and Nation - The British Experience. Perth:
> Paradigm Books - Curtin University of Technology.
>
>McCorquodale,J. (1986). The Legal Classification of Race in Australia,
> Aboriginal history, 1986, Vol. 10.
>
>Malik, K. (1996). The Meaning of Race: Race, History, and Culture in
> Western Society. London: MacMillan Press. and an interesting
>discussion at: http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/racegallery/malik.html
>
>And all this given that at:
>
>http://www.aaanet.org/gvt/ombdraft.htm
>
>is the conclusion:
>
>"The American Anthropological Association recognizes that elimination of
>the term "race" in government parlance will take time to accomplish.
>However, the combination of the terms "race/ethnicity" in OMB Directive 15
>and the Census 2000 will assist in this effort, serving as a "bridge" to
>the elimination of the term "race" by the Census 2010."
>
>Thus some 13,000 American (US?) anthropologists argue for the elimination
>of the term "race" in its entirety.
>
>My point is simply that any language associated therewith must also expire.
>Of couse given that Australia takes this social construct, this invention
>"race", and gives it a legal Guernsey in sections 25 and 51. xxvi, and then
>from this High Court Judges determine that it is ok the make laws against
>Aborigines! Dissonant bastards are us antipodeans eh?
>
>How do I draw this diatribe to a close? Perhaps to remind ourselves that
>in 999 cases out of a thousand the children of Fourth World Australian
>women were the product of exploitation, and then we blame both victims, the
>child and the mother, and call the baby "part" of something or someone -
>black. Yet we do not equally call the baby part-European, or part-
>Scottish, or part-Anotherone?
>
>Perhaps we use the term First Nation or Fourth World descendant, if we
>must? But how does that person identify in a cultural sense? I suggest
>that the person is Fourth World, First Nation, (particular language group -
>eg. Nyungar), Aborigine, but to somehow inject something less than, is to
>blame the victim of the colonising process. This is just not on or not
>appropriate.
>
>A person is not a part-anything. A person is a complete human being.
>
>
>
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