9 - Whose Citizens? Whose Country?

Summary

In 1935 a fair-skinned Australian of part-indigenous descent was ejected from a hotel for being Aboriginal. He returned to his home on the mission station to find himself refused entry because he was not Aboriginal. He tried to remove his children but was told he could not because they were Aboriginal. He walked to the next town where he was arrested for being an Aboriginal vagrant and placed on the local reserve. During World War II he tried to enlist but was told he could not because he was Aboriginal. He went interstate and joined up as a non-Aboriginal person. After the war he could not acquire a passport without permission because he was Aboriginal. He received exemption from the Aborigines Protection Act – and was told that he could no longer visit his relations on the reserve because he was not an Aboriginal. He was denied permission to enter the Returned Servicemen's Club because he was. In the 1980s his daughter went to university on an Aboriginal study grant. On the first day a fellow student demanded to know, ‘What gives you the right to call yourself Aboriginal?’

We can multiply examples of this kind of extinction by legislation to the present day. In the 1960s Charles Perkins was told more than once that he could not be Aboriginal because he was a university graduate.