Who me … an Aborigine?

The suited driver in the white Mercedes is heading to the domestic airport with time to spare. His passenger requests, “Drive me to Redfern, I have the street address here”.

Arriving at the destination, the driver remarks, “This isn’t the best part of town, Sam. I’ll come with you”.

Sam, reassuring him, replies, “It’s all right, I’ll be okay. Wait here, I’ll be back soon”.

It’s cold and the apartment dweller, dressed in her pink dressing gown, layers of jumpers underneath, grey hair bound in rollers, opens the door, shocked and surprised to see standing before her the swimmer, Sam Riley. A momentary awkwardness as they both reach for their voices. Smiling, Pat asks, “Hello, aren’t you Sam?”

Sam smiles and nods and without hesitation in one breath fires off the beginning. ”My mother was adopted and I’m Ronnie’s granddaughter. We’ve just found out that Ronnie was my mum’s mother, that’s why I’m here. Can you tell me anything about Ronnie?

Long before Samantha’s mother sought an explanation about her heritage, many Aboriginal people silently claimed Sam, during her distinguished career, as one of theirs, because she had all the attractive physical features and idiosyncrasies of an Aboriginal.

Diplomat Gordon Matthews adds yet another dimension to this complex debate about identity. Gordon, a former colleague of mine at the Department of Foreign Affairs in the 1980s, thought he was Aboriginal until he met his father in Iowa, United States, as he recounts in Gordon Matthews, An Australian Son:

I thought about what it meant to know that my father was Sri Lankan. Having believed that I was Aboriginal, it felt disappointing and anti-climatic to acquire a racial background that I had never anticipated. There was no sense of excitement or completion. Before arriving at the belief I was Aboriginal, of the nationalities I had considered I could be, Sri Lankan had figured but only marginally and suggested by others on a mere handful of occasions.

Emotionally part of me was still definitely Aboriginal. Although I was now Gordon Matthews, Sri Lankan adoptee, my connection with Aboriginal Australia continued and wouldn’t suddenly wither and die. Aboriginality was something of which I had been aware virtually as far back as my memory stretched. I had experienced first-hand what it felt like to grow up Aboriginal in mainstream Australia, albeit on distinct and unusual terms. I had suffered that. Like any fundamental experience, you don’t unlearn that.

The ABS statistics reveal that between 1996 and 2001 the total Australian population increased 6 per cent while the number of people counted as Indigenous in the census (460,140) increased by 16 per cent. Of the 16 per cent rise in the Indigenous population, 12 per cent was due to natural increase (i.e. births and deaths) and a further 4 per cent due to other factors, primarily an increasing propensity to identify as Indigenous.

This new 4 per cent that now identify as Indigenous are, in some quarters, unfavourably referred to as “Johnny Come Latelys” (JCLs). The objectors say the JCLs are taking over Indigenous-specific scholarships at universities as well as jobs in the public and private sector. These objectors add that many JCLs are gaining preference over them in interviews, as they present a more pleasing and conservative look to biased interviewers, because they have more refined European features.

Their central argument is that the JCLs didn’t want anything to do with their local Indigenous communities when they were growing up. On the flipside, many fair-skinned Aborigines who have always identified with their communities continue to have problems being accepted by some of their own people.

Picking an Aboriginal today can indeed be a difficult task.