Indigenous Australian identity

The importance of identity for many Indigenous people seems to be recognised on a broader scale than in recent years. The negative media images which drew a direct line between Indigenous people and violence and alcohol have been replaced with more realistic images, depicting vibrant and diverse people and cultures. As well, the importance of ‘place’ would appear to be slowly acknowledged as critical to Indigenous people’s sense of identity. Place is used here to describe a belonging to and knowledge of country and kinship to its people.

This was denied to many Indigenous people due to the assimilation policies introduced in the 1940’s. Indigenous people lost contact with their families, with their land, with their very essence. Children were taken from their families to be institutionalised or fostered with Anglo Australians. Indigenous people were forced from their country and moved onto reserves. (Heiss & McCormack, 2002) Anglo Australians made all decisions for Indigenous people, including who was or was not Indigenous. ‘From the time of the first settlement, …there have been no less than 67 identifiable classifications, descriptions or definitions used by governments to determine who was an Aboriginal person.’ (Elli

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Indigenous people stolen from their parents as children and raised in institutions confirm that efforts were made to deny them their identity. That’s my symbol, a beautiful flower. ”’ (Arden, 1997 )

Banjo Clark believed that many problems were caused when young people did not have the opportunity to know their Old People so they did not learn about their culture and history, their laws and principles. ‘It was after the visit from the Welfare lady that Mum and I decided we would definitely never tell the children they were Aboriginal…. He knows my identity and I can look at him and know his…. there was no way in God’s world that they would encourage us to keep our culture. if word got out, another Welfare person might come and take them away. If a man doesn’t know who he is, where he’s from, where his boundaries are, then he’s no one, nobody, nowhere. In the case of the Australian author and artist, Sally Morgan, both her mother and grandmother had been taken from their families, her grandmother at 15 and her mother as a very young child. ‘…to call himself a strong black man, a Bidjara Murri man,…’ Talking about winning the Australian Film Institute award in 1998, Deborah believes …’if anything it allowed my father to be proud of his heritage. ’ (Clark, 2002) These institutional policies resulted in confusion among some Indigenous people with regard to identity as they were raised as white Australians, with, in certain cases, negative views of Indigenous people and their culture. “These scars are my brand, my identity…Another Aboriginal looks at these scars and he knows where I’m from, what my country is, who I am.

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