102
types established characteristics as being ontological, the white
population was freed of further responsibility.
Certainly, for later generations in South Australia the Aborigine
was allowed to impinge very little on white societyɪ. In South
Australia before the 1950s and even into the 1960s, many, if not
most, urban people had never seen an Aboriginal person. They,
like the Government officials, were able to deny stoutly and with
clear conscience, racism in Australia.
Gale, (1972:48) asserts that the wave of establishment of
reserves in the sixties (Amata, 1961; Davenport, 1963; Indulkana,
1967) and the transfer of responsibility of missions to the government
(Gerard, 1961: Koonibba, 1963) mirrors the government actions of
* √
the first few years of settlement. She argues that, in the sixties,
the wave of segregation was sparked by the newly discernible consciousness
of Aboriginal identity. If such a consciousness of identity
in fact were to be systematised, it would have called into question
the policies and practices of over a century. The establishment
of further reserves and the renewed segregation of the Aboriginal
F
people may be seen as a measure to protect the symbolic universe
of mainstream society.
Typifications constructed in the early days of settlement
persisted in slightly modified form into the forties. The assumptions
of the Land Acts legislation that Aborigines did not exist, the
active extermination of Aborigines and their segregation, out
of sight, led with ease to theorizing that Aborigines were a dying
race. This theorizing could, in turn, be used as a basis for
further isolating the people, nihilating their world of meaning,
by advocating policies of isolation and dispersal, the former
legitimated by economic advantage to the dominant group.
SeeRowley, 1971 .∙, passim; 1971b:22.
