The name is absent

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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. ∣

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 ^l_μ

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).