The name is absent

327

At Augusta Park, the choice of housing indicated a distancing
from the ’world’ of Aborigines who belonged to a lower socio-economic
class, just as the choice to move to Salisbury North achieved the
same end.

At Port Augusta High School the world of’practising’ Aborigines
was a taken-for-granted reality. The world of tradition-oriented
Aborigines was given credibility not only by the learning about
a culture, but by attributing power to' the members of this culture,
and recognizing the autonomy of the community in Aboriginal affairs,
a recognition given by non-Aboriginal people, as well as Aboriginal
people.

The world of Aboriginality was legitimated by the white school world.

The psychological model was not sufficiently powerful to draw back
young acculturated Aborigines to tribal life, but it did operate
to produce theorizing on their part about the possibility of initiation,
and to arouse real fear among those relatively newly established

in Port Augusta, of tribal men coming down from the north, the
red menɪ,either to punish wrong-doing or to take off young men
for education and initiation.

The theorizing of the schools was seen to have evolved following
upon the theorizing of the Schools Commission about Aboriginal
students, and the availability of grants for personnel and programmes
coming from the Commonwealth Government, made possible by the advice
of the Schools Commission.                                      .

Three of the schools, Port Augusta High, Augusta Park and

Taperoo, were judged to ’theorize’ about Aborigines in ways that
went counter to the theorizing of the dominant group in society,
despite the fact that the schools were acutely aware of the possibility
of a white backlash.                                                     .

The ’red-men’, Aboriginal men wearing red head-bands, are initiated

men.

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