The name is absent

Gale (1974:2) remarks that the urban Aborigines of Adelaide
•'have retained only a little of their original culture”. They have
been isolated socially and ’’have developed social patterns different
from those of either traditional Aborigines or other Australians”.
Gale saw their world of meaning ’’blending traits of traditional
and western culture” (Gale, 1974:2). Thus urban Aboriginal people
do not identify with Aboriginal Law. On the contrary, the impact
of the missions was to destroy the Law and the authority of the
elders in introducing the people to Christian religion.

Very few of the people in Adelaide possess even words of the
tribal language. The language comes to individuals in mediated form,
as a cultural ’object .

The urban Aborigine, under current legislation is subject only

to white man’s law.

Aborigines who were easily identifiable by

physical characteristics, there were those who had features and
colouring which enabled them to ’pass’ into the white community.

F

These people often lived and worked in the mainstream society until               ∣

the seventies.                                                                          :

A significant development of the seventies was the provision
of secondary education grants for Aborigines. An unintended
consequence of these grants was that those who had ’passed’ into
white society, but wished to avail themselves of these grants, had
first to ’identify’ as Aboriginal. Such identification was then
recognised by the funding body, mediated by the school or some
other agency.

Thus individuals who once made a choice to ’pass’ into the
community, in the seventies identified their children as Aborigines.

1-

Many of these children had believed themselves to be ’white’.

¹cf. a report (The Advertiser, 3/4/82) of a young Aboriginal
woman seeking to learn, and then teach, the language of her people
by using a translation of the Bible made by a missionary at Point
McLeay in the 1860s.

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