Who We Are
Unit: Professional Writing and Presentation 212 - Fakes, Frauds and Fictions
Journal for Teaching Week 7 (300 word limit)
Aboriginality
It is a strange thing to consider that you can claim Aboriginality,or any ethnicity. It makes sense, sure enough, to apply for citizenship and to then be considered of that country, but do you ever lose your background? I don't think so. I think the most curious thing about claiming Aboriginality is the requirement of having lived the Aboriginal experience. What is that? One could say that Colin Johnson did in fact have this experience because he was treated like an Aboriginal by the wider community. But to say that he has lived the experience because he had been separated from his family and had been in jail, I don't believe covers it. I'm sure there are many non-Aboriginal people who have had this life, but that hardly allows them to claim an Aboriginal experience. It was curious that, even though Fielder stated in his lecture that he was not Aboriginal, he did identify himself through Aboriginality, as a whitefella. Fielder also noted that when he attended the rallies over the Old Swan Brewery, he already had in place ideas about the Aboriginality that he would discover while he was there. Surely this perception infers what we think that Aboriginal experience should include – which, from I recall, included rallying for the land that had been taken from them. Did Johnson undertake this experience as well?
Journal for Teaching Week 7 (300 word limit)
Aboriginality
It is a strange thing to consider that you can claim Aboriginality,or any ethnicity. It makes sense, sure enough, to apply for citizenship and to then be considered of that country, but do you ever lose your background? I don't think so. I think the most curious thing about claiming Aboriginality is the requirement of having lived the Aboriginal experience. What is that? One could say that Colin Johnson did in fact have this experience because he was treated like an Aboriginal by the wider community. But to say that he has lived the experience because he had been separated from his family and had been in jail, I don't believe covers it. I'm sure there are many non-Aboriginal people who have had this life, but that hardly allows them to claim an Aboriginal experience. It was curious that, even though Fielder stated in his lecture that he was not Aboriginal, he did identify himself through Aboriginality, as a whitefella. Fielder also noted that when he attended the rallies over the Old Swan Brewery, he already had in place ideas about the Aboriginality that he would discover while he was there. Surely this perception infers what we think that Aboriginal experience should include – which, from I recall, included rallying for the land that had been taken from them. Did Johnson undertake this experience as well?
And what then, about those people who have Aboriginal blood, but no “experience?” Personally, I have too many different bloodlines to mention, and I don't follow the culture, religion or language of most of them, but I still have those bloodlines. I still appear on a myriad of family trees.
Ethnic identification is such a strange thing. To others we are identified as one or other, and it seems often that people have to choose one background, one bloodline, probably only for the ease of identification for statistics. Hell, even migrant citizens are told to either be real Australians or go home.
posted by Daebereth at 9:48 pm
1 Comments:
See this article by John Gardiner Garden (yes thats his surname).
This is a good intro into the history of 'Aboriginality' as the invaders defined it, regulated it, contolled it etcetera.
http://www.aph.gov.au/LIBRARY/pubs/rn/2000-01/01RN18.htm
Question: What does it mean to be white?
Don't know? Never thought about it - perhaps because you never had to?
If so thats what white privilege is all about.
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