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Dear Joe,

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Thanks for your suggestions of possible explanations of what might have triggered the current higher education boom of aboriginal students.

As you may (or may not) know, I have been living in Paris for many years now, only returning to Australia occasionally to see family and friends. I have lost track of a lot of the evolution over the years.

To my surprise, the few “aborigines”, mainly artists and cineastes, who get to Paris are not what I would normally call aborigines at all. At least, they are not full-blooded Aborigines but half-castes or, perhaps even something less than that.

The Aborigines I used to know in Australia were all charcoal black. I went to a bush school with some of them in Queensland as a boy.

As it happens, I’m a bit of a mixture myself, including English, Irish and Chinese, but it never occurred to me that I was anything other than Australian.

Do you have any idea how much Aboriginal blood you have to have in Australia to be officially recognized as an Aborigine ?

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Dear onthebeach,

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« You don't think that fires that dramatically reduced and would eventually see the end of the rain forests counts as destroying the ecosystem? »
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No, onthebeach, I must confess I have no information on that at all. I should very much welcome any relevant geophysical studies you may be able to indicate.

The closest I can find is a 2011 geophysical research paper which has this to say :

« Aboriginal vegetation burning practices and their role in the Australian environment remains a central theme of Australian environmental history. Previous studies have identified a decline in the Australian summer monsoon during the late Quaternary and attributed it to land surface-atmosphere feedbacks, related to Aboriginal burning practices. Here we undertake a comprehensive, ensemble model evaluation of the effects of a decrease in vegetation cover over the summer monsoon region of northern Australia. Our results show that the climate response, while relatively muted during the full monsoon, was significant for the pre-monsoon season (austral spring), with decreases in precipitation, higher surface and ground temperatures, and enhanced atmospheric stability.

Our model results lead us to conclude that Aboriginal vegetation burning practices, while significantly affecting pre-monsoon events, did not have a major impact on the late Quaternary summer monsoon of northern Australia. Our conclusions further prompt a fuller evaluation of the significance of Aboriginal burning practices for the Australian environment. » :

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1029/2011GL047774/full

While there is evidence of impact on the environment, according to this study, current state of the art geophysical research apparently does not allow us to conclude that it was a major impact.

It has, however, been clearly demonstrated that by burning forests in north-western Australia, Aboriginals altered the local climate. They effectively extended the dry season and delayed the start of the monsoon season.

By the way, I was not suggesting that the Darling Downs farmers copied the Aborigines by burning their land after each harvest. I was just pointing out that they too burned their land but, obviously, not for the same reasons. The farmers did not indulge in fire hunting.

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Hi Banjo, ca va ?

Your question, 'how much Aboriginal blood you have to have in Australia to be officially recognized as an Aborigine ?' raises all sorts of problems, so much so that it probably couldn't be raised here.

There are all manner of people, many with some Aboriginal ancestry, who claim to be Aboriginal, sometimes on the basis of a new-found grand-parent (usually a grandfather, which is a bit of a giveaway), or even a great-great-grandfather. Many people have gained high positions on the strength of these claims. One born every minute, after all.

In my view, it depends on - apart from at least some Aboriginal ancestry - who raises you, your Aboriginal parent, usually a mother but more and more fathers as well, and in turn, who raised them, and so on, back hopefully in an unbroken line to the ancient ancestors. Usually, genuine people don't have to go back very far at all, they would just shrug and say, 'well my mum's Aboriginal', as if it's self-evident. Which it usually is in their case. After all, especially for older generations, the only relations they know are Aboriginal.

You can usually pick a phony, either they go on about culture, or wear a hat in the colours, or crap on about spirituality and being at one with nature, or all three. They might even give their kids Aboriginal-sounding names.

I try to avoid such people, which means I can't go anywhere near many Aboriginal organisations. Fine with me. Life's too short.

Joe

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Dear Joe,

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« Your question, 'how much Aboriginal blood you have to have in Australia to be officially recognized as an Aborigine ?' raises all sorts of problems, so much so that it probably couldn't be raised here. »
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An “Aboriginal” cineaste came through here a few years back, a chap called Warwick Thornton. I was invited to attend the premier of his film “Samson & Delilah” in Paris.

He made a speech at the end of the film and took a few questions. When he stood up to make his speech I whispered to my (French) wife “He doesn’t look like an Aborigine to me. They’re usually charcoal black. He’s probably half-caste or only part Aborigine”.

A cocktail followed and my wife and I happened to find ourselves standing in front of Thornton as we tasted some Australian wine. To open-up the conversation, my wife said to him with a pleasant smile “ My husband tells me you’re not a true Aborigine”. His eyes flared-up. His face turned red. He grinded his teeth and I thought he was going to kill me. He was a pretty big guy.

Then he calmed down a second and blurted out that his Aboriginal mother had been raped by his genitor, a white man.

I told him I enjoyed his film and asked him where I could buy the music. That calmed him down. He told me where I could purchase it on the internet and promptly disappeared into the crowd without uttering a word.

I have the disc right here in front of me. It’s Great stuff.

Getting back to the question of urbanisation, massive population growth and inter-marriage as a possible explanation of the fantastic increase in higher education among Aborigines over the past decade, I can’t help thinking that what you describe seems to translate into an irreversible dilution of the Aboriginal genus and its gradual absorption, generation after generation by the Caucasians.

I found this article which appeared on Thursday, 29 March 1934 in The Observer of Adelaide on the subject:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/47547227

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Hi Banjo,

Thanks for that interesting article. Of course, people have never been pawns of policy, they have married who they like (that's never been illegal, although 'consorting' was discouraged: stability of relationships was what policy-makers were after) and can call themselves whatever they like. And of course, no matter how pale people may be as a result of out-marriage, generation after generation, that's still the case. People don't classify themselves just to please policy-makers.

And of course, the upshot is that more and more Australians, on the one hand, have Aboriginal ancestry, but each generation will, on the whole, get paler - with more attenuated links to their ancestors, like the rest of us. So much of that relationship depends, after all, on links to a place, say a 'Mission' or a significant district.

So with each generation, visits and sense of allegiance to a particular place or region also become just another factor in one's ancestry, just as white Australians may proudly say that their ancestors came from County Tyrone or Durham or Glasgow, or Calabria or Chos or Wroclaw, without ever having been there or ever intending to go there.

I'm sure that most of us who have married Indigenous partners have reflected on this. So we try to keep those attachments alive as best we can, although people have busy lives, and reasons and occasions to visit get more limited to funerals, and even those occasions become fewer. My kids haven't been back to their mother's country for perhaps ten years. She and her parents are buried here in Adelaide, with only a brother and earlier generations buried back on the 'Mission'. That's life.

Perhaps people who find out late that they have some Aboriginal ancestry should do a sort of apprenticeship, so that if they discover when they are fifteen, that they have Aboriginal ancestry, they might need to sit back and study and experience and re-kindle relationships for fifteen years before they put their hands out, or take a Indigenous-designated job. They'll never have to do the hard yards, like earlier generations.

Joe

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Dear Joe,

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« That's life »
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You’re right there, Joe …

All the best.

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