The name is absent

IOl

The Contemporaiy sedimentation of such policies of extermination
is related by Turnbull (1972:233).

People selling buttons in Melbourne streets for an

Aborigine cause not long ago were astounded by the
. savagery of the answers given by some of those asked

to buy - ^,I'd rub the lot out', 'Give 'em bait' and
so on, and these from people who had probably never
seen an Aborigine.

J-

The very use of the word 'bait' categorises Aborigines as
animals. The comments revealed that the attitude of extermination,
as a permitted activity, and the typification of Aborigines as
less than human has been sedimented into attitudes of people far
removed from those who actually did give Aboriginal people 'bait'.

A modified version of physical nihilation is found in the
policy of segregation. Rowley (1971:182) saw the policy of segregation
growing out of the conviction that 'there was no other way to
avoid extermination'.

8.42 (ii) Segregation
*

Segregation may be seen as a particular form of physical
nihilation. Gale (1972:39) states that the "phase of segregation
had appeared before 1860, and from that time onwards the government
took little responsibility for Aborigines". The power to segregate
1
Aborigines in South Australia was contained in the 1939 Act.-
The same provision was made in the 1962 Aborigines Act.

Segregation, in that it involved the removal of those deviating
from mainstream norms from sight of the dominant group, was a
form of denial and nihilation. In order for this to happen,
initially, the construction of negative stereotypes seemed almost
necessary to allow the settlers to displace the Aborigines, and
2
their descendants to banish them from view . Once negative stereo-

r

See p. 91.
2

Nihilation by banishment has been used consistently to manage
the problems of those having some form of stigma. Usually this
stigma is allied to physical attributes. However, in Western
Australia in the 1930s, the unemployed were seen as being stigmatised
and were removed from sight into camps outside the city boundaries.

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