The name is absent

presumed to have existed before 1776? (Watson, in
Gilbert, 1977:184).

For others, the quest for Aboriginal identity followed a
different path, and produced a ’crisis’ of identity for a different
reason.

There were those whom missionaries took to educate (Perkins,

1975:29); those fostered out to white families (Molly Dyer, in

Gilbert, 1977:224,225), who lived all their lives as white people
and thought of themselves as whites. At some stage, circumstances
forced them to the realization of their Aboriginality, to a painful

search for parents and kin, to a search for a new Aboriginal identity
і

among Aboriginal people who saw them as white.

For these people, too, there was a search for an Aboriginal

identity credible to them.

10.4 Summary - implications for the construction of identity

In terms of the social construction of identity, Aboriginal

people whether being identified by the dominant mainstream society,

*

being identified by other Aborigines or identifying themselves

as Aborigines, were in a situation, until the seventies, where
the identity which was bestowed upon them was negative or anomic,
and the positive identity sought was unstable, contradictory and

elusive.

Colin Bourke highlights the feelings of other Aboriginal

people when he says:

Few Aborigines are completely comfortable with their
Aboriginality. There is a large vacuum of unfilled
Aboriginal needs. It is these unsatisfied desires -
to be able to see oneself as a person of value, to
be proud to be an Aborigine, to be able to work at
one’s own identity and heritage in a positive light -
which negate all the programs derived for Aboriginal
advancement (Bourke, 1978:4).

An analysis of Bourke’s statement isolates factors seen as

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