The name is absent

304

The people are thus close enough to tribal people not to
need to romanticise or mythologise about Aboriginality, or about
Aboriginal culture.
4

The case is different at Strelley. Individuals do not merely
relate to, they are a part of, the life-history of the group. They
thus possess an idential which not only locates the individual within
the Mob, but gives a sense of pride in the right to do so.

18.52 Body-physical characteristics

On the street there are the eyes_t staring at black skin
(Gilbert, 1973:41).

I^,d walk into a town. You walk down the street and
you're black and the white man doesn't have to say a
word to you. He steps around you_i you ^,re shit_t you^,re
nothing. And they cut you down with this sort of concept
and you get that way_i you feel it_i you feel inferior
(Chicka Dixon, in Tatz, ed., 1975:49).

The physical characteristic of skin colour has been made, for
V

Australian Aborigines, a source of shame.

In a society where assimilation is the aim, lightness of skin
gives the possibility of denial of Aboriginal identity, ’passing’
becomes a possibility, and shades of blackness become important .

However, shame about skin colour becomes irrelevant when there
is pride in Aboriginality, and the word ’blacks’, once a derogatory
epithet, becomes a name, a symbol of cohesion. The idential of skin
colouring can thus become a source of unity.

-J

Fink relates that, in a town which she studied, among the ’Upper
group’ of Aboriginal people there was a constant pre-occupation with
the theme of colour. ’’When babies are born, the women all go to the
hospital to see the colour of the child ...To the white people of
Barwon the coloured people are all the same. They do not distinguish
between Upper and Lower groups; they still class them all as
blacks” CFink, 1957:105).

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