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94
1
not to possess these negative traits could be declared exempt j
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from being an Aborigine. The legislation thus located Aboriginal :
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identity within a negative symbolic universe.
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Those Aborigines who had lived in white society before the ∣
Act of 1939 now found themselves, unless they carried a certificate
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of exemption, viewed as less than white citizens, subject to special
legislation that made certain things ’crimes’ for them, though ∙
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not for someone who had applied for exemption or their non-Aboriginal j
next door neighbour, or their non-Aboriginal partner on an assembly line. J
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This legislation contained within itself the implication i.
that if, ’in order to be treated like a human.being’ (the phrase ∣∣
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recurs again and again in conversation and is interchangeable
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with ’being treated like a white'), individuals applied for and
were granted an ’exemption’, they had to cut themselves off from ∣
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their family, their kin, their place of birth, their culture, !'
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and indeed their Aboriginal identity. ∣
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An Aborigine who had been declared 'exempt' could not visit
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a reserve without permission. Mrs. G. Elphick (in Berndt, R. i
ed., 1971:102) states that she had to obtain permission to attend lμ
her mother’s funeral; another family negotiated for three days ι,
to take their mother to a reserve for burial.
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8.33 Summary ■
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A review of legislation passed with reference to Aborigines <
can be shown to nihilate the world of meaning of the Aboriginal 5.
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people. 11
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All the characteristics of the people were transformed by i
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law into negative characteristics. ∣
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The people were made dependent and then treated as if they
were dependent and passive by nature, their negative and anomic
characteristics ontological.
See also Perkins (in Tatz, ed., 1975:40, 49).
