The name is absent

319

supported moves to ensure that Aboriginal culture was not lost,
but was brought to people’s understanding by those who still knew
about it, ’practising Aborigines’.

The Principal compared the process of identity-structuring
to that of a family couple going through the ruins of a burnt out
house, picking out those things they have treasured in the past
-I
because they are the things that are part of their identity.
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The school recognised the fact that people from tribal backgrounds
exercise an influence, in various ways, over Aboriginal groups.
In doing this, the school legitimated the psychological model of
an Aboriginal world differing from the white world.

Aboriginal people were brought into the school to teach an
Aboriginal language and to give an input into history and social
sciences in order to link the curriculum with the culture, and ^x
to provide positive experiences for the structuring of Aboriginal
identity.

It is important to note that Aboriginal elders from the area
had resented the introduction of Aboriginal language into the curriculum,
reasoning that language could not be separated from the culture
and that the secret∕sacred elements of the culture could possibly
be abused in some way, for example, by inadvertently making ’male’
knowledge available to females.
*

The model of identity supported by the school was a positive
identity coming from models offered by Aboriginal people themselves.
The tradition-oriented Aborigine and his culture was made real
to Aboriginal children and to white children as well.

Aboriginality was not a reified notion - a manifestation of
Aboriginality having deep roots into the past was presented to
the students at Augusta Park to observe at first hand, by the
introduction into the school of tradition-oriented men. Aboriginal

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