162
The Schools Commission manifestly has made efforts to respond
to the needs of Aboriginal students. However, despite the fact
that Fraser maintained that schools were the key element in bringing
about a new Australian identity, it must be asked whether schools
alone can assume the burden of providing a setting wherein differing
cultures will be respected when, in fact, cultures continue to
be esteemed differentially in the wider society and the values
and norms of some cultural groups are held to be, or are in fact,
incompatible with those of other groups.
It has been argued above that conceptualisation acts to
locate identity and that naming also is an indicator, in a society,
of the locus of power for bestowing identity.
Contemporary naming of Aborigines will now be examined as
part of the theorising that is the basis for the construction
of the ‘worlds’ within which Aboriginal people find identity.
11.5 Contemporary naming/identιfication of Aboriginal people
The 1939 Amendment of the 1911 Aborigines Act in South Australia
extended the definition of Aboriginal beyond strain of blood,
fractions of blood and mode of life to include all those persons
who Weredescendedfrom the original inhabitants of Australia.
In the seventies, the definition of Aborigine was to shift this
emphasis to one of self-identification.
Mrs. Glad Elphick (in Berndt, ed., 1971:105), speaking of
her work with the Council of Aboriginal Women, and describing
those who would be assisted by the Council, defined Aborigines
as:
... any person who identifies as, or is identified
by others as an Aborigine.
Jones
claimed that
...the identification of racial origin is important
only where it provides a basis for the formation
of distinctive social groups and group attitudes
(Jones, 1970:41).
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