The name is absent

164

Aboriginal people do not take lightly such arbitrariness

when it is practised by Aboriginal people who, in contemporary
society, have the power to name themselves by self-identification,

and who locate themselves now in white society, now in Aboriginal
society.

Aboriginal people reject as ’pseudo-whites’ those who take
*

up government positions. They reject also the 'pseudo-blacks’,
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those who once located themselves in the white world but who
now opt to identify themselves as Aborigines.

There’s Aboriginal people, I call them coconuts
they do not have a real identity as Aboriginal
people. They’re dark outside, white inside.

I’ve got a niece of mine who I’ve condemned very
severely for this. Up until the time the study
grants came in, she was no Aboriginal. Soon as
the money started to roll in, ’Oh yes, I’m an Aboriginal’.
I’ve never forgiven her for that (George Abdullah
in Gilbert,1977:205, 210).

Nevertheless, despite this lack of certainty in establishing
membership categories, there is a discernible shift in the process
of naming, and the power to name, as a form of location of the
self in society.

Henceforth, it will be the Aboriginal people themselves
W

who, however tentatively, name themselves. In the contemporary
climate this naming takes place within positive theorising.

As a final example of elements of ’theorizing’ about Aboriginal
’worlds’ and Aboriginal identity, the recognition given to these
’worlds’ by the social scientists in the seventies must be acknowledged.

11.6 Contemporary recognition of the:’worlds’ of Aboriginal
people by researchers in the social sciences

The seventies saw a dramatic surge in the activities of
researchers in the disciplines of the social sciences.

The Social Sciences Research Council of Australia set up
the first independently financed and controlled survey of Aborigines

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