Abstract
As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Michael Dodson stated in his 1994 Wentworth lecture, ‘[s]ince first contact with the colonisers of this country, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been the object of a continual flow of commentary and classification. Since their first intrusive gaze, colonising cultures have had a preoccupation with observing, analysing, studying, classifying and labelling Aborigines and Aboriginality.1 In the previous chapters, dispossession has largely been seen in terms of land. This book is also fundamentally about self-identity and the refusal of settler governments to recognize the way that people define themselves. This refusal has material repercussions of various kinds, most acutely the loss of land. In this chapter, we address another dispossession, that of the right to self-identity, examining the role of colonial legal definitions in this dispossession. The colonial preoccupation with defining Aboriginal identity in legislation is evident in the number of laws containing definitions of Aboriginal persons.2 Since the arrival of the British in Australia in 1788 colonial and, after Federation in 1901, State and Federal governments have enacted over 70 separate pieces of legislation containing definitions of Indigeneity.3 The purpose of these definitions has almost invariably been for the management and assimilation of Aboriginal people.
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Notes
M. Dodson (1994) ‘The Wentworth Lecture — The End in the Beginning: Re(de)finding Aboriginality’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1 (1), p. 2.
Y. C. Paradies (2006) ‘Beyond Black and White — Essentialism, Hybridity and Indigeneity’, Journal of Sociology, 42 (2), p. 355.
J. McCorquodale (1986) ‘The Legal Classification of Race in Australia’, Aboriginal History, 10 (1), pp. 1, 7.
C. Land (2006) ‘Law and the Construction of “Race”: Critical Race Theory and the Aborigines Protection Act 1886, Victoria, Australia’, in P. Edwards and S. Furphy (eds), Rethinking Colonial Histories: New and Alternative Approaches (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press), pp. 137–55.
N. M. Nakata (2013) ‘Identity Politics: Who Can Count as Indigenous?’, in M. Harris, N. M. Nakata and B. Carlson (eds), The Politics of Identity: Emerging Indigeneity (NSW: UTS e-Press), pp. 125–46.
K. Ellinghaus (2001), ‘Regulating Koori Marriages: The 1886 Victorian Aborigines Protection Act’, Journal of Australian Studies, 25 (67), pp. 22, 23.
Statement of the BPA, 7 May 1884, VPRS 10265, Unit 266, Public Record Office of Victoria (VPRO), quoted in B. Galligan and J. Chesterman (1997), Citizens without Rights: Aborigines and Australian Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 1.
Ellinghaus, ‘Regulating Koori Marriages’, p. 24; J. Horton (2010) ‘The Case of Elsie Barrett: Aboriginal Women, Sexuality and the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines’, Journal of Australian Studies, 34 (1), p. 1.
H. Irving (ed.) (1999) The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press), p. 328.
G. Nanni and A. James (2013) Corranderk — We Will Show the Country (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press).
Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (1997) Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia).
Commonwealth of Australia (2012) Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution: Report of the Expert Panel (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia), Chapter 9.
Chief Justice Robert French (2011) ‘Aboriginal Identity — The Legal Dimension’, Australian Indigenous Law Review, 15 (1), p. 18.
I. E Haney-Lopez (2013) ‘The Social Construction of Race’, in R. Delgado and J. Stefancic (eds), Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), p. 238.
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© 2015 Mark McMillan and Cosima McRae
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McMillan, M., McRae, C. (2015). Law, Identity and Dispossession — the Half-Caste Act of 1886 and Contemporary Legal Definitions of Indigeneity in Australia. In: Laidlaw, Z., Lester, A. (eds) Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137452368_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137452368_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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