The name is absent

This is less so in Pt. Augusta, where the cohesion of the
■

group means that people, even in

seen as ’working for Aborigines’, rather than working for the

There is a stronger feeling in Pt. Augusta that

Aboriginal people are the ’boss’ - that they exercise a degree

of autonomy over their lives.

18.56 Culture as an іdential
*

Ve are Iosin* all our identity_i our culture_i you know?

Just fadin’ out all the time. A lot of our young people
don’t want to be part of it_i or Ieam it. The more we
lose_i the more it is destroyin’ us (Horry Saunders, in
Gilbert, 1977:33).
F

As a member of a confused people, (and the word confusion
or confused is used by almost every one of the nineteen speakers
recorded in Tatz), Vera Lovelock asserts that,

Half the time you’ve got to hang on to something and
that something is being Aboriginal. It is half the ^x
battle to hang on to just that. But we’re not going
to be able to hang on much longer if something doesn’t
happen soon (Tatz, 1975:71).

The problem is that in the urban situation no-one can agree
on what ’being Aboriginal’ means, what it is that people must Jhang
on to’.

In order to build up a sense of community, Aborigines project
theories about their own lost culture. Many urban dwellers have
to Ieam about the culture of their ancestors exactly as white
people do. They idealize 'Aboriginal culture' in the same way
that many sociologists have done in searching for community and
extolling the virtues of primitive communities.

_i * *

'Reality definers' from Aboriginal society profess to know
things that are 'secret'.
*

Preliminary interviews with Aboriginal people revealed a need

for some of them to establish links with tradition-oriented people.
One of the male teacher-aides commented ^,a propos of discussions

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