The name is absent

464

about a multicultural Australia emanates from the Department of
Migrant and Ethnic Affairs.

Aborigines are manifestly not migrants and it is inappropriate
for them to be part of theorizing about migrants.

If the Government is giving priority to cultivating a new
cohesive ’Australian* identity that includes ethnic groups as
well as Anglo-Saxons, then the Ethnic Affairs section of the
existing Department should be separated from the Migrant section.
Aborigines could then be included in theorizing about ethnic
groups.
⅞.

If Ethnic and Migrant Affairs were separated administratively, the
Department of Aboriginal Affairs could then become a sub-section
of Ethnic Affairs. Most of the ’intractable’ problems inherent
in theorizing about Aboriginal people as part of a cohesive
Australian identity would disappear. Aborigines would be Aboriginal-
Australians, as Italians are Italian-Australians.
"4

School theorizing, such as that offered at Salisbury North
and at Stone’s Business College,has produced structures to meet
the needs of Aborigines who do not wish to have a separate identity,
but wish to be seen as Aboriginal Australians. Where such
institutions theorize about different ’worlds’ for Aboriginal
people, the people are offered real choices.

If, however, the policies of government are policies of
rhetoric, cloaking an unwillingness to have black people as
part of an ’emerging Australian identity’, then the intractable
problem will remain, and will always remain.
№

The scenario is one where politicians recognise and reflect
the typifications of mainstream society that reject the Aboriginal
people.

If policies concerning a multi-cultural Australia continue to
exclude Aborigines, then the latter will be trapped into a conceptual
framework which segregates them from mainstream society.

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