The name is absent

9.2 NamingZIdentification by means of census categories

Rowley discussed the implications for conceptualisation

of the Aboriginal 'world* implicit in the construction of census
categories:

It is suggestive that so little is known of the
demography of this sector of the population. Even
the census figures do not help much, because those
of over half-Aboriginal descent have been excluded
from census, while those thought to be less than
half-caste, (the census term) were counted with the
non-Aboriginal population. The figures do offer some
indication of relative population densities as
between census divisions, but provide little more
than a basis for guessing how many people belong to
Aboriginal groups. The census categories of Aboriginal
and half-caste could not be so well defined as to
offer precise information - another indication that the
Part-Aboriginal has been regarded by governments as
a phenomenon of transition rather than as an end in
himself. The ’solution’ of the Aboriginal ’problem'
would come when he disappeared altogether into a
•white' community without coloured enclaves (Rowley,
1971:3).

The construction of census categories thus acted to niħilate
the Aboriginal world. Those people more than Iialf-Aboriginal
were not counted at all. Those less than half-caste were 'white'.
Aborigines, then, if they existed at all, were half-castes.

The term half-caste, however, had come to lack any precision

at all and had become simply a derogatory term applied to
coloured people and internalised by them as a negative
identification.

Our people own Australia, mate. Australia that's
what I’m trying to tell you ... it’s the first Garden
of Eden. It belongs to the Aboriginal, our ancestors.
I don’t know what nationality you are, but look at me.
I’m not an Aboriginal. The only Aboriginal is the
full blood Aboriginal, eh? I'm what you call a bastard.
A breed. A half-caste (Doug Young, in Gilbert, 1977:143)«

Rowley pointed out the logical conclusion of this categorisation:
the solution to the Aboriginal problem was that the part-Aborigine
was to disappear - in other words, the solution inherent in census
categories was one of nihilation.

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