The name is absent

478

It is concluded that, since it is the schools which already

are the institutions recognising differences amongst the Aboriginal
• * ⅛

people, the school situations could provide a locus for identity
construction and maintenance by Aboriginal people. Some ethnic
groups,strongly oriented towards identity-maintenance, have
focussed on this area as achieving their aims.

It is acknowledged that the study shows that the schools
where Aboriginal students are most accepted are those with a strain
towards assimilation.

Interviews suggested that, for certain Aboriginal individuals,
pride in achievement together with Freud’s ’obscure emotional
forces’ binding people to Aboriginal ancestry, is sufficient
to locate them in a secure Aboriginal identity. For this group,
the policy of ’assimilating’ schools is appropriate.

For others, there is the need to locate themselves within an
Aboriginal group identity, to construct a model having some of the
characteristics of the Strelley model and the Pt. Augusta model.

It is argued that the elements of such a model can be nurtured

within an Aboriginal independent school.

The proposal of independent schools is not geared towards
assimilation. On the contrary, their aims would be specifically
to counter the nihilation of an Aboriginal symbolic universe. Their
purpose would be towards the building of a ’world’ that is Aboriginal
in content, that would provide a basis for the cultivation of
causal-meaningful bonds within Aboriginal groups.

The proposed solution is one of changing school structures
to foster Aboriginal identity at a level where it has been shown
that there is support for a multi-structural as well as a multi-
cultural situation.

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