Racial ideologies in Australia's Gulf Country

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Racial ideologies in Australia's Gulf Country David S. Trigger

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University of Western Australia Version of record first published: 13 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: David S. Trigger (1989): Racial ideologies in Australia's Gulf Country , Ethnic and Racial Studies, 12:2, 209-232 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1989.9993632

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Racial ideologies in Australia's Gulf Country* David S. Trigger University of Western Australia

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Blackfella, Whitefella Yellafella, anyfella It doesn't matter what your colour As long as you're a true fella A verse from a song by Warumpi Band, an Aboriginal band originating in Central Australia. Introduction

This article presents an ethnographic study of European1 and Aboriginal conceptions of 'race' and 'racial' groups, in a region of Australia's Gulf Country. It considers the extent to which European ideology has influenced Aboriginal thinking, particularly in relation to the ideological constitution of mixed-descent people as a separable and distinctive group. By focusing on the way mixed-descent people have been perceived, and on their situation in social life, it has been possible to clarify some of the complex issues of 'race relations' in this region (see Figure 1). The concept of 'race' remains a contested one in the social sciences. This is particularly the case in Britain, where in the context of studies of post-1945 immigration a number of writers (Miles 1984, 1988; Husband 1987; Morgan 1985) have produced closely argued positions which challenge the appropriateness of the concept of race as an analytical tool. For example, Miles (1984) acknowledges that the analytical task is to explain why and how the idea of race has such 'profound meanings' and 'great utility' for people making sense of their everyday world (pp. 232-3). But he stresses that this task 'involves formulating theoretical concepts which are not grounded in everyday commonsense'. From Miles's Marxist perspective, it is the concept of production relations, rather than that of race, which enables an adequate analysis of complex social relations, both within the population of 'black' migrants and between this population and various British class fractions. Miles argues convincingly that ideological diversity within so-called 'racial' groups cannot be ignored, under the Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 12 Number 2 April 1989 © Routledge 1989 0141-9870/89/1202-0209 $3.00/1


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guise of recognizing broad 'racial' cohesiveness among 'blacks' or 'whites' (Miles 1984: 226-7). This paper concerns a setting very different from Britain. Yet the analytical task of accounting for the reproduction of common-sense notions about 'racial' groups is similar, as is the necessity of explaining diversity within the broad Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal 'racial' categories. To focus on relations between non-Aborigines and people of both full and mixed Aboriginal descent, is in part to address the questions of how and why a continuum of observable physical differences is attributed meaning. Are there variations in the meanings attributed by Europeans and Aborigines respectively to phenotypic distinctiveness? If so, how is such variation best explained theoretically? Are there simply different 'intellectual traditions' operating among Europeans and Aborigines, which to differing degrees entail views about the relatedness of inherited physical and socio-psychological characteristics? This article finds that there are such differences, but that it is not adequate to rest theoretical explanation solely on the notion of culturally different 'intellectual traditions' continuing over generations. The nature of European 'racial' thought is evident from the data, whereas I have found it more difficult to come to firm conclusions about Aboriginal conceptions of the relationship between physical appearance and individuals' socio-psychological characteristics. However, the critical theoretical point is that the data clearly indicate the historical centrality of colonial power-relations in the ideological constitution of mixed-descent people as a separable social category; and that this has been so for the thinking of people of all 'racial' backgrounds, despite their socialization into differing cultural and intellectual traditions. Colour, inequality and colonial social relations

The literature on other colonial settings presents many references to the social and political distinctiveness of people of 'mixed race' ancestry. In some settings, they have occupied distinctive positions in class and status hierarchies based on perceptions of skin colour and other phenotypic features. In South Africa, people with both White and Black ancestry (commonly known as 'Coloureds') have historically occupied an intermediate status and class position between Whites and Blacks, in a hierarchy of rigid, legally sanctioned, 'color-castes' (van den Berghe 1969: 321-8). In Brazil during the slave period, 'mulattos' (i.e. people of mixed 'White' and 'Black' parentage) historically secured a special niche in the socio-economic structure as the agents of Whites, and a complex social hierarchy based on physical appearance has continued into this century (Banton 1983: 20-1). A particularly well-documented case is the Caribbean. Hall (1985: 274) describes how


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during the period of slavery in Jamaica, the 'coloured' population gradually emerged as an intermediate group between Blacks and Whites, on a social ladder carefully graded by colour, ethnic and racial characteristics. Following emancipation, 'free coloureds' became the backbone of the modern Jamaican middle class. Wilson's (1973) ethnography of an island society in the western Caribbean region during the late 1950s and early 1960s, provides a closer study of the nature of such social hierarchies in more recent times. He presents a setting where skin colour was part of a person's 'credentials of identity'. 'Fair' or 'clear' skin was socially and aesthetically preferable, as were European facial features (1973: 96). But this ideal status hierarchy did not always mirror actual class divisions, for 'people achieve[d] eminence or degradation in Spite of their color'; moreover, there was vagueness and often ambivalence about the social significance of 'ethnic phenotype[s]' (i.e. 'racial categories'), for 'people of all shades' were commonly members of the same family (1973: 96). Wilson (p. 97) portrays a complex situation where: 'Few people are constrained by race, but no one rejects it out of hand as a principle of classification'. Various Australian studies also address the complex significance of skin colour and other aspects of physical appearance in colonial social relations. In some early research in a small rural town in northwest New South Wales, Reay and Stitlington (1948) establish that variation in physical appearance among Aboriginal people did not affect the 'colour-bar' between Aborigines and non-Aborigines. The 'colour-bar' operated against social mobility for all 'mixed-bloods', 'including those whose aboriginal admixture is not identifiable by physical characteristics' (1948: 189). Similarly, class divisions within the 'mixed blood' Aboriginal community were based, not predominantly on physical appearance, but on adoption by certain Aboriginal groups of such 'basic white values' as 'thrift', hygiene, home-making, sobriety, and marital constancy with its moral implications' (p. 206). In another paper on the same setting, Reay does mention an association between class and skin colour. She says that Aboriginal people going to live 'in the midst of the general community are generally of light caste' (1951-2: 118). Furthermore, she reports what appear to be aspects of 'racial ideology' in Aboriginal public opinion, 'which states that it is "natural" for women to marry men of their own or adjacent castes' (p. 121). However, this view about what is 'natural' is in some cases fused with persons' calculation of what is in their interests, for when 'lighter caste women express . . . [a] preference for lighter [marriage] partners', they do so in the hope that their descendants will thereby 'be able to pass into the general community without being the objects of colour prejudice and discrimination' (p. 122). A paper concerning an Aboriginal population on a southern Queensland reserve in the 1930s (Kelly 1944) presents a different


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Aboriginal view, for 'practically all the fair haired or blue eyed people . . . had married very dark or full blood people' (1944: 147), indicating no desire for 'passing' into the wider population. Moreover, Kelly (p. 147) comments that Aborigines in this setting 'do not discriminate about half-castes' as do Europeans. Tonkinson (1988) argues similarly for a more recent ethnographic setting (the 1970s), and provides more explicit data. At the remote Western Desert Aboriginal settlement of Jigalong, mixed-descent people (as well as other non-White people such as Asians) are known by a specific term in the local language. Thus, colour 'is recognized and labelled, just as blindness or size are' (1988: 3). However, Tonkinson argues that 'it is culture that is paramount in establishing identity' (p. 3). People of mixed descent are also known by the term for 'person', which is used in a generic sense to mean 'black person'; though people of mixed descent can be classified as Whites if they are strangers to the local community (p. 4). Tonkinson's view is that, more generally throughout Australia, skin colour is 'not irrelevant for Aborigines', but it is not regarded as having necessary behavioural concomitants. Nevertheless, she points out that some Aboriginal people share European notions about colour and culture, and suggests that this is 'at least partly the result of the influence of European ideas on Aboriginal thinking' (p. 20). White (1981) gives some Aboriginal views from Arnhem Land in the 1970s, a comparable setting to the Western Desert in that Aboriginal traditions have remained central to the predominant world-view and social life in both regions. White's comments differ from those of Tonkinson, in that the gist of the Arnhem Landers' views presented is that the distinction between 'full-bloods' and 'part-Aborigines' is important, and that the birth of children of Aboriginal/European descent destabilizes Aboriginal 'law'. The quotation White gives is from a 30-year-old man, who stresses the necessity for Arnhem Land Aborigines to 'keep [their] own color' (1981: 25). White (p. 25) refers to a public meeting at a large Settlement, where in 1974 it was unanimously agreed that children of Aboriginal/European descent born outside of marriage should be sent away from the area. The broader sentiment appears to have been to discipline the mother in these circumstances, and it seems plausible that these women (possibly along with some other members of the community) may have been less enthusiastic about this resolution than were others. The most detailed (albeit unpublished) work on the social significance of phenotypic features among an Aboriginal population is that of Terwiel-Powell (1975) at Hope Vale settlement in northeast Queensland during the early 1970s. She describes beliefs and practices concerning three 'colour classes', each recognized on the basis of skin colour, facial characteristics and family antecedents. There was the 'class' containing people 'with very dark skins and predominantly Aboriginal features', regarded either as of 'full blood Aboriginal descent' or as of



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Aboriginal descent mixed with Torres Strait Islander, Melanesian or 'Asiatic' ancestry. Signs of Melanesian ancestry were found in hair texture and wave, body build and facial features. A second 'colour class' included all 'whites', the prototype being 'a blue-eyed, fairhaired, pale-skinned person with comparatively heavy limbs', although distinctions were made within this group according to knowledge of persons' nationality and conformity with what Terwiel-Powell refers to as 'the Germanic stereotype'. Thirdly, there was the 'colour class' including those with skin colour intermediate between those of the two other groups; within this group are 'persons with mixtures of Aboriginal and European ancestry, where the latter predominates, and persons with Chinese or Malayan as well as Aboriginal forebears who possess distinctive non-Aboriginal features'. Terwiel-Powell describes a preferred 'rule of racial endogamy' (1975: 292-3), plus beliefs that the three main 'colour classes' differ in innate intellectual abilities (p. 302). Hence, intellectual and cultural superiority was associated with a fair-coloured skin, and the 'colour classes' were ranked in a hierarchy of prestige (p. 303). While the Hope Vale study does not treat in any detail the role of European ideology in the reproduction of these 'racial ideologies' among the Aboriginal population, Terwiel-Powell does mention the relevance (and influence, to 'a certain extent') of local non-Aboriginal staff attitudes towards marriage between people of different 'colour classes' (1975: 334). Yet this influence could not have been great. For staff apparently regarded the differences in skin colour between 'full blood' and 'mixed descent' individuals as slight, and as posing no impediment to their successful intermarriage. They were opposed to any unions between 'Whites' and either of the other two 'colour classes' (p. 335). This leaves Terwiel-Powell's extensive data without substantial theoretical treatment, for the analysis does not address adequately the question of the historical reproduction of the 'colour' status hierarchy. The analysis remains based on the general notion of the different groups simply pursuing their respective interests, without discussion of the ideological system within which these interests have been historically constituted. In recent years, a number of writers have discussed Aboriginal thinking on this matter, in the fuller context of European assumptions and practices. Rowley (1972a; 1972b) was among the first to stress the importance of properly considering the influence of European racial ideology on relatively powerless people in a colonial context. In a review of legislation and administrative practice (1972a: 343), he made the general point that: It has happened over the whole course of interaction between Aborigines and other Australians that those of light skin coloration have had special opportunities, not available to their darker brothers

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and sisters, to resign or escape from Aboriginal society and to 'pass' into the general community. He had in mind that such 'passing' into the general population was a way to escape European racism, so his comment about the data given in the New South Wales study discussed above was that the reported class divisions among Aborigines resulted from those with lighter skin colour anxiously attempting to establish a separateness from those darker and in worse circumstances. Hence, 'European colour prejudice had had the effect of establishing a colour hierarchy within Aboriginal society' (Rowley 1972b: 37 emphasis in original). Langton (1981: 17) also comments on these New South Wales studies, that they failed to make clear that the class divisions among Aborigines had their origin in oppressive legislative and administrative practices. She argues further (though without presenting supporting empirical data) that classifications by colour were not perpetuated by Aboriginal people, 'except where legal, economic or other factors enforced at least lipservice to them', giving the example of some Aboriginal people in urban settings referring to themselves as 'Coloureds' in order to make economic gains. Two recent empirical studies set in rural New South Wales (Cowlishaw 1986; Morris 1985) have discussed European racial ideology in some detail. Cowlishaw has stressed the extent to which racial ideology among Europeans in a rural town in the 1980s stems from economic and political relations of domination between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, arguing (1986: 11) that such processes are independent of the degree to which people actually look different. However, like a number of the studies already mentioned, she presents little actual empirical data on Aboriginal common-sense notions concerning this matter. In an historical study, Morris (1985: 87) argues that it has been European ideas of 'race' which have been 'central to attempts to establish cultural hegemony over Aborigines'. However, he also gives little data on Aboriginal views about matters of 'race', hence it is unclear to what extent Aboriginal thinking has been controlled hegemonically. Indeed, when he does comment on this matter, Morris (p. 92) points out that Aboriginal perceptions of themselves do 'not reflect the same pre-occupation with Aboriginality as a pristine or static entity', as does the predominant European view. Hence, just to what extent Aborigines have been ideologically dominated via a process of themselves embracing the European concept of 'race', with its notions of 'pure', 'full' and 'part' descent, remains unclear from these studies. Recent works focusing on policy and legislation in Aboriginal affairs (Markus 1982; 1988; Tatz 1981) have certainly described European beliefs and prejudices, which have historically assumed the 'full blood'/'half-caste' distinction to entail an association between lighter



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skin colour and greater capacity for assimilation to a European lifestyle. In the pastoral industry, which has been the predominant industry in the region dealt with in this paper, certain management practices appear to have been based on this assumption. McGrath (1987: 116) describes as a method of control over Aboriginal labour on stations in the Northern Territory throughout this century, the placing of 'part-Aborigines in positions of authority' over other Aboriginal workers. She suggests that this 'took advantage of the pre-existing divisions between full bloods and coloured people' (p. 116), though we are not presented with an account of the nature of these divisions. Stevens (1974: 129-31) has stressed the 'in-between' status of mixed descent people on Northern Territory stations as recently as the late 1960s. And on the basis of his biography of a mixed-descent stockman in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia, Shaw (1983: 14) describes a status structure which was well established by the 1930s, whereby people of mixed descent had higher status and economic advantages in comparison to people of full Aboriginal descent (see also Rowse 1987: 89). Collmann's (1979: 42) similar points for the Central Australian cattle industry include his argument that mixed-descent people 'maintained a distinct advantage [over other Aborigines] . . . in the competition for scarce goods which whites monopolized'. As in the case of the other studies which have been reviewed, what is missing from the literature on the pastoral industry, is substantive treatment of Aboriginal views about the social significance of skin colour (and other aspects of physical appearance), and adequate assessment of the relationship between these views and European racial ideology and associated practices. European racial ideology in Australia's Gulf Country2

The fact of mixed-descent children being born in this region emerges as an issue regarded as a serious problem in the discourse of European officialdom, from the time of the turn of the century. From Roth, the Queensland Government Northern Protector of Aborigines, we have a general estimate in 1898 for northern Queensland districts of 'one halfcaste among every 25 aboriginals'. He comments that this is an underestimate, because many 'half-caste' children are killed at birth - 'the colour being sufficient' (Roth 1898: 3); he later comments similarly for 1900, specifically in relation to the Burke district (which includes the eastern half of the study region) (Roth 1900: 10). We are not given any indication of beliefs about mixed-descent children among Aboriginal people, and there is no mention of whether the rape of Aboriginal women by non-Aboriginal men affected these beliefs. Roth hopes that once Aboriginal people understand Government proposals to 'provide for such children' (i.e. separate them off into removed settings), 'this form of infanticide will cease'. Roth's official views in his 1902 annual


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report (Roth 1902: 7) are that if 'left to themselves' the 'half-caste' girls become prostitutes and the boys become cattle thieves. Thus, in the 'far western and Gulf country' it is 'better to remove half-caste girls to the Missions'. During this early period then, the official European view was that mixed-descent children needed protection, both from Aborigines and certain types of Europeans (and other non-Aboriginal people such as Chinese). Queensland Government archival sources3 give details on 116 people (including 58 children) removed to settlements and missions from locations within the eastern half of the southern Gulf region during the period 1912 to 1936, and another source4 recounts many other removals. Contemporary Aboriginal accounts indicate that during this period police particularly sought to remove mixed-descent children (see Trigger 1982: 98; Tonkinson 1982: 7; T.O.P. 1982: 292-3). From the western side of the border as well, there are stories of such removals, some of which include references to how on occasions light-skinned children would be rubbed with charcoal to make them look darker and thereby reduce the likelihood that police would seek to remove them from their families. Into the 1940s, European officialdom often combined the removal of mixed-descent children with the arrest of European men on charges of cattle-stealing and 'consorting' with Aboriginal women; examples of this practice are evident in reports by two Northern Territory policemen documenting their investigations in the border area in the early 1940s (Graham 1943; Bowie 1944). For semi-permanent sexual relationships between European (and Chinese) men and Aboriginal women at bush camps and stations were reasonably common, despite the fact that laws in both Queensland and the Northern Territory prohibited these relationships from early in the century until the 1960s.5 The report of a Northern Territory Department of Native Affairs Patrol Officer in 1948 (Kyle-Little 1948) indicates the administrative view that the situation of mixed-descent children was a quite distinct issue requiring specific investigation. The Officer reports for three stations in the Northern Territory that the European lessees had maintained long de facto relationships with Aboriginal women, and in all cases notes close and caring relationships between these men and their 'half-caste' children, and also the likelihood that the latter would inherit the stations after their fathers' deaths. In this kind of situation, the official European attitude was one of non-interference, apart from seeking to have the European men marry their female Aboriginal partners. However, where mixed-descent children and young people were regarded as without such European tutelary supervision, the administrative position was that state interference was necessary. The Northern Territory Officer recommends at Wollogorang Station, adjacent to the Queensland border, that 'the half-caste girls, . . . be


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shifted from the area as it is quite apparent that nobody is looking after their interests'. He reports approvingly on the actions of an elderly European copper-miner living in a cave at the nearby Redbank Mine, who had taken a 'half-caste girl' from the 'native camp' at an early age, and 'had looked after her interests ever since': '[He] had given her a little education, clothed and fed her'. Throughout his report, the Patrol Officer's attitude is clear, that the needs of mixeddescent children cannot be appropriately met in the life of the 'native camp'. If this is primarily because of the girls' needs for protection (presumably including protection from sexual involvement with Aboriginal men), his view is that mixed-descent young men have the capacity to develop broader skills and possibly become owners of capital, rather than remaining as wage-labourers. To quote from the report (Kyle-Little 1948): [The head stockman at Seven Emus Station, 'an exempt half-caste'6] . . . is . . . a good type of man with a reputation throughout the district as far as Burketown as being an exceptionally good cattleman and shrewd businessman. He has a Savings Bank Account and a [large] c r e d i t . . . .He expressed to me his ambition was to own his own property, (p. 3) [At Pungalina Station, a 'half-caste' stockman and the European lessee's two 'half-caste' sons] . . . were a good class of lad and were all recognised as smart stockmen, (p. 4) [At Wollogorang, three 'half-castes'] . . . are all classified as stockmen and carry out their duties as such. They work hard and long hours and no attempt has been made to educate them in any way. They live and eat in the native camp and in general are treated as an average Aboriginal stockman. I can see no reason why . . . [the European Manager] should not be made to employ these halfcastes as apprentices and provide quarters and better class of food. Each boy should have a bank account and their weekly wages paid directly into same. (p. 7) No such comments are made regarding the prospects of people of full Aboriginal descent. A man who was a Police Sergeant and Protector of Aborigines on the Queensland side of the study region during the 1940s has expressed similar sentiments in recollections of his working life. He mentions (R. Hagarty, personal communication, 25 March 1988) that there was a 'type' of 'half-caste' who: 'usually forged ahead and struck out on their own in small cattle holdings or other avenues such as fencing, yard building, tank sinking etc. Usually they did well and became recognised and respected'. His opinion is that they were spurred on by an aggressiveness stemming from their knowledge that 'the black man


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"looked down" on them, and the white man considered them an inferior class'. However, from the perspective of this ex-policeman, other mixed-descent people were 'shy and introverted', and these: 'made no effort [i.e. economically], and took black wives and lived with and as aboriginals in the camps. This was the cause of the saying, "The biggest pull was back to the ash heap". ' Those who strove for economic success, on the other hand, sought to 'prove they were the equal of, or better than, the white man'. A further example of European views comes from a man who was for many years (during the 1950s and 1960s) the Superintendent at Mornington Island Mission (and who returned to visit during the early 1980s), and again we have a perspective linking mixed-descent with greater capacity for economic responsibility. According to his estimate, during the 1960s mixed-descent people constituted approximately 10 per cent of the Aboriginal population of Mornington Island, and in the 1980s the mixed-descent proportion may be a little higher. The exSuperintendent makes the point (D. Belcher, personal communication, 22 February 1988) that: 'Generally the H.C.s [half-castes] were more adept at doing things which required European-like responsibility', and that in his view it is 'the white genes of the H.C. [which] seem to give them better adaptation to European work etc. than the F.B.s ['full bloods'], when both are reared in the same environment'. At Mornington Island, the European staff are said to have respected the mixed-descent people for their work and 'responsibility'-related capacities, rather than the 'degree of colour'. Finally, at Doomadgee Mission, the setting from which much of the data below is drawn concerning ideology among Aboriginal people of full and mixed descent, we have similar European views about the greater capacities for (particularly certain types of) work among mixed-descent people. During my primary fieldwork period (1978 to 1983), certain Mission staff suggested that mixed-descent people were generally more 'trainable' for work-roles entailing responsibility; others mentioned their belief that it is natural that the 'mixing' of 'the two races' (i.e. Europeans and people of full Aboriginal descent) produces the 'best workers'. The European Manager/owner of a nearby station pointed out that this process occurs just as the 'mixing' of two strains of cattle or horses produces a type of animal which shares features of both the strains from which it has been bred.7 In summary, European ideology has historically distinguished mixed-descent people as socially separable from people of full Aboriginal descent, due to their greater capacities for becoming assimilated into the wider Australian work-force. Males have been viewed as suited for jobs involving a degree of 'responsibility' in the pastoral industry, while females have been typically regarded as 'trainable' for domestic work, to a greater extent than full-descent Aboriginal women. Policy at the two missions in the region



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(Mornington Island and Doomadgee) has thus historically sought to keep children of mixed-descent separate from other children, and, particularly, in relation to mixed-descent girls; the European administrative view has been that they should be 'protected' from becoming integrated into Aboriginal social life through marriages and sexual relationships with full-descent Aboriginal men. European thinking has been part of a racial ideology, in that the socio-psychological characteristics of mixed-descent people (and others) have been seen to be inherited biologically. And the idiom used to express this notion is that such characteristics and capacities are inherited through 'the blood' or 'the genes'. Non-Aboriginal ancestry (or 'blood') has been regarded as partially 'breeding out' or displacing what have been viewed as Aboriginal socio-psychological characteristics, leaving mixeddescent people 'racially' distinct from Europeans, full-descent Aborigines and other types of people known to have been in the region historically (particularly 'Chinese' and 'Afghans'). Racial ideology among Aboriginal people?

Aboriginal classification of phenotypic difference Throughout the region, people regarded as of mixed Aboriginal/nonAboriginal descent are conceived as a socially separable category within the population of Aboriginal people. When a speaker focuses on such mixed descent as a feature of an individual's identity, he or she may refer to the person being 'half-caste', 'quarter-caste', or more usually a 'Yellafella'. In more general designations, mixed-descent people are included within the wider category of (predominantly fulldescent) Aboriginal people, and hence may be referred to as 'Blackfellas' (or by various other terms used routinely for Aboriginal people). While skin colour is the main criterion for emic recognition of a person as of mixed descent, the process is complex, and subject to other considerations, in particular, knowledge of persons' parents and grandparents. A continuum of skin coloration is recognized within the regional population of Aboriginal people, and generally understood as derived from parentage and grandparentage. For example, a woman distinguishes her full-descent brother's children as looking 'fair', 'because they mother colour', i.e. they inherit a 'fairer' colour from their mother, whose own father was the child of a European man and a fulldescent Aboriginal woman. The children's mother's mother was of full Aboriginal descent, and their own skin colour is quite dark; their 'fairness' is regarded as simply reflecting the 'fairer' or 'lighter' colour of their mother (and the greater 'fairness' of their mother's father). It is unlikely that the children would be referred to as 'Yellafellas', though their mother could be (and, typically, her own father would


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be). She and her siblings have been referred to as 'the real dark [kind of] Yellafella'. Similarly, a person can be said to be 'Yellafella, but little bit dark', or 'Yellafella, but real light'. These kinds of qualificatory comments simply locate people along a colour continuum including all Aboriginal people throughout the study region. The further physical feature which can also be referred to in discussing a person's parentage or grandparentage is the eye shape, as a degree of epicanthic fold is taken as evidence of some Asian ancestry, typically Chinese. Persons' actual ancestry, particularly the identity of their father (or grandfathers), may not be known widely, yet their 'light' (or 'bright') skin colour will be simply taken as evidence of a non-Aboriginal or mixed-descent person in their genealogy. For example, several people have simply been said in general conversation to be 'too light' to be descended from their socially acknowledged full-descent Aboriginal fathers. Nevertheless, in the case of people regarded as only 'little bit light', such views are normally offered tentatively, for a degree of individual variation in skin colour is accepted as normal within the recognized full-descent population. In one case, a full-descent man (now deceased) is simply said to have been 'copper-coloured' (and hence known as 'Yellow Jack'); while another full-descent man is said to have been of 'light' skin colour because his conception totem was 'rock possum', which apparently has light-coloured fur. A further important criterion, relevant to people of mixed-descent being constituted in public discourse as members of a socially separable category, is aspects of their behaviour. The issue is whether or not persons' behaviour leads others to conclude that they regard themselves as 'classed' with people who are routinely designated publicly as 'Yellafellas'. For example, a person descended from a fulldescent Aboriginal mother and a father apparently of Aboriginal/ Chinese descent may only very rarely be tagged in discourse as a Yellafella, or have his personal identity constructed situationally by reference to his skin colour or physiognomy, because: 'He don't class himself as a Yellafella', or 'He got "no time for them Yellafeljas'. The fact that the skin colour of such a person is- likely to be quite dark plausibly influences the lack of social distance from the full-descent Aboriginal majority.. However, the public identity of a person with quite 'light' skin colour, can also be constructed without much reference to his or her status as a Yellafella, if he or she is regarded by those of full Aboriginal descent as somebody who 'class himself with us all the time'. Alternately, somebody such as a young man who was regarded as 'that quarter-caste fella [who] don't class himself with us, won't talk to us', 'will have a public persona known predominantly by reference to his skin colour and.status as a Yellafella. The core of people conceptually constituted as the Yellafella minority during the research period thus varied somewhat in terms of



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skin colour. While this minority will be referred to in this article as being constituted by those of 'mixed descent', we must note that some people of mixed Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal ancestry were only occasionally placed in the Yellafella category, subject to flexible assessments about aspects of their behaviour. The recognition of persons' part nonAboriginal ancestry and consequent physical distinctiveness is not routinely pejorative in tenor (cf. Shaw's (1983: 238) similar comments for the East Kimberley region).8 People of mixed descent themselves at times refer to the non-Aboriginal components of their ancestry. Particularly where their non-Aboriginal parent (typically their father, or less commonly, grandfather) was widely known in the region, individuals may well acknowledge their consanguineous link to him with considerable pride. Nevertheless, a key contention in this paper is that an adequate account of the significance of skin colour in Aboriginal social life, and associated social relations between those of full and mixed Aboriginal descent, necessarily entails discussion of status and class inequalities throughout the Aboriginal population. Status relations, social class and skin colour at Doomadgee (1978-83) A survey conducted at Doomadgee Mission in 1980 showed 15 per cent (50 out of a sample of 324) of adults to be unambiguously regarded as 'Yellafellas' in the opinion of those consulted. The proportion of mixed-descent children (while not surveyed) appeared similar to that of adults. In many cases, these adults and children were residentially distributed throughout otherwise full-descent families, and in one sense, virtually all mixed-descent people routinely engaged in social relations with full-descent people in the course of normal daily life. However, the conceptual separation of the two categories was evident from such discourse as the following man's statement of the reason why some Aboriginal residents feared the consequences of European men coming to live in what I have described elsewhere (Trigger 1986) as the 'Blackfella domain': Some people are saying . . . : 'Oh if we let one White man come into the Village, they'll all be wanting to come . . . and live,. . . and marry our Aboriginal race, dark race, and . . . biggest advantage of children be here then be all half-caste. What going to happen to the black ones? They all gonna die away. The black one will be destroyed in fifty years time, won't be a black race in the Village . . . . ' Old Blackfella, he's waking up to himself now [laughing]. (T75)9 Mixed-descent people were themselves said (at least from the perspective of full-descent people) to prefer marrying each other; one man stated that this was particularly so for mixed-descent women who


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would not want to marry full-descent men. The 1980 survey found that of a sample of thirty-eight mixed-descent married residents, only 13 (34 per cent) were married to full-descent residents, and given the much larger full-descent population this represents a substantial degree of endogamy within the mixed-descent population. Moreover, at Doomadgee, there has clearly been considerable tension in status and class relations between full- and mixed-descent Aboriginal people. While there have been exceptions, those designated as Yellafellas have been said to commonly 'reckon they're next to Whitefella', i.e. indicate that their status is higher than that of other Aborigines - somehow in between Blackfellas and Whitefellas. Evidence of this assumed higher status was identified by nonYellafellas with reference to the fact that Yellafellas commonly adopt a 'flash' style, predominantly in their domestic life; and that they have been able to attain a comparatively higher socio-economic status (and associated class position) than others, mainly because of more favourable treatment from European officials and employers. It has been suggested that predominantly mixed-descent families (though not normally individuals of mixed descent within otherwise full-descent families) have desired, and been able to achieve, material aspects of their domestic lifestyle in a way closer to the European ideal, than have other Aboriginal families. The houses, yards, cars and general physical appearance of these mixed-descent families have thus been known as 'flash'. An unelicited statement on one occasion provided an informative indication of the emic association of mixeddescent status with spruced-up cleanliness and the outward signs of good health as they are known to be defined within European ideals. In comment about an old full-descent man who in 1982 was frail, crippled and decrepit, a woman of full descent contrasted his appearance with how he once looked very healthy, and thus described him as having looked 'real half-caste', 'like properly clean and Yellafella'. The implication that Yellafella attributes are comparatively closer to Whitefella status than are Blackfella attributes is again indicated when women of mixed-descent are occasionally referred to as 'mijiji' ('missus', a word for European women), although this most commonly occurs in reference to mixed-descent women who have left the Settlement to live permanently or semi-permanently in predominantly European towns. The conception of Yellafellas (held by other Aborigines) as disproportionately 'flash' is tied closely to their perceived greater ownership and use of material items obtained from the Australian market. It is alleged that Yellafellas have been disproportionately favoured in the allocation of jobs and European-style housing at Doomadgee. For example: 'If half-caste fella miss a day he still keep job; if Blackfella miss it, he get sacked'; and the reported comments of a full-descent member of the local Aboriginal Council in 1983 (quoted


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in Brisbane's Sunday Sun newspaper, 27 November 1983: 10-11):


The full bloods respect me but the half-castes say 'He's only a black fellow'. The half-castes get all the best jobs and the responsibility. They also get the best houses while we are in the humpies by the dump. Indeed, in October 1983 there were apparently seven Aboriginal fulltime staff employed by the Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Islanders Advancement (personal communication, from the then European Manager), and all were publicly regarded as Yellafellas. The fact that a substantial number of jobs and advisory roles in the Aboriginal Affairs bureaucracy (centred in a town adjacent to the immediate study region) have increasingly come to be occupied by people of mixed descent, has also not gone unremarked among the majority full-descent Aboriginal population at Doomadgee. Furthermore, there has at times been resentment that certain mixed-descent people resident in nearby towns have allegedly emphasized their Aboriginally only during the last decade or so, when government funding for Aboriginal organizations has increased. Consider the following complaint made in a public meeting at Doomadgee, by an Aboriginal Council Chairman about certain mixed-descent people who were at a regional meeting to bid competitively for government funds in competition with the Doomadgee community: I went as a Councillor] [to a Department of Aboriginal Affairs Area Conference]. When I went in there I saw hardly any fella look bit like me colour. They were Yellafellas, half Whitefellas . . . and here with their top education lot of fellas never got, and they bin fighting for Aboriginal money! When there bin no grants given out to Aboriginal [after that] they bin come back and put themselves as Aboriginal, that's how I criticise them. I told'em [delegates from the Gulf region]: 'Any you fellas bin under the Act?' [i.e. subject to the constraints of the State law concerning Aborigines]. None of them fellas could give an answer for that because they bin live in a place, live free, they bin brought up free. . . (T55) Implicit here is the Chairman's view that mixed-descent people who had lived in the larger towns of the region had been able to avoid the kind of institutionalized state surveillance to which Reserve residents had been subject historically (see Trigger 1988); and also that they had been able (if they wished) to downplay their Aboriginality in a way unlike those on the Reserve. In the view he put, these people therefore had less rights to government funding than Reserve communities such as Doomadgee and Mornington Island. In other conversations, he also suggested that mixed-descent people on the


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Reserve had historically enjoyed greater freedom than those of full descent, to leave and obtain a better material standard of living within the wider non-Aboriginal society. While he simultaneously referred approvingly to those mixed-descent people who have historically chosen to continue living at Doomadgee among the full-descent Aboriginal population, what is relevant here is the fact that the Chairman uses the idiom of skin colour to frame his criticisms of a particular category of persons within the Aboriginal population. My own quantitative data from the 1980 survey of the Doomadgee population indicate an association between publicly attributed Yellafella status and proportionately higher employment (both full-time and part-time), greater access to operational motor vehicles, and occupation of newer European-style housing.10 However, capacity to obtain both vehicles and good housing are best related to employment, which enables people to purchase and maintain the former and keep up rental payments on the latter. And the obtaining of regular employment (at least in such areas as office work, as teacher aides, etc.) may be best related to having achieved a high school education. Some data indicate that mixed-descent people disproportionately achieved higher education levels.11 Associated with the assertion that Yellafellas enjoy higher socio-economic status have been complaints that they have on occasions disproportionately been able to thwart the authority of the Aboriginal Council and even of the Aboriginal Police. For example, it did not go unnoticed that the Council Chairman was quick to warn and • threaten aggressively the full-descent protagonists of a fight one night that they would be arrested, whereas s'everal nights later he did nothing when a drunken and disruptive conflict broke out among a group of mixed-descent young men (at times termed the 'top end boys'). Given the Chairman's sentiments as documented above, we might assume that his inaction was not necessarily due to a desire to favour the 'top end boys', but perhaps to a lack of confidence in confronting them directly. These 'top end boys' were a small group of mixed-descent young men who lived (until 1983) predominantly with their mixed-descent parents and in-laws in the northwest corner of the Village, and formed a particularly separate grouping. On an occasion when one such young man accompanied his wife on foot to my camp in the eastern area of the Village so that she could deliver a message to me, he made it clear that he did not usually traverse the Village very far from the 'top end'. In response to my comment that I had never seen him walking there before, he replied that I would never see him doing it again for he would always drive a car or ride a horse, and in any case he would: 'stay up in the corner [of the Village], where I belong'. The fact that this group of mixed-descent young men collectively maintained a degree of social discreteness was known routinely throughout Settlement social life, e.g., they were said to drink alcohol among


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themselves rather than with others: "Those top-end boys don't drink down there [at a nearby site where most drinking of alcohol was done], they go bush in their cars when they got grog'.


Mixed-descent status and attitudes towards 'Blackfella law' A further issue in status relations between Aboriginal people of full and mixed descent at Doomadgee has been the expectation among those people committed to 'Blackfella law' that Yellafellas were typically uninterested in it. Thus, discourse would at times link the lack of 'law' knowledge of several mixed-descent men, with their perceived preference for pursuing a lifestyle derived from European traditions: 'He don't know law - he Mandagi [Whitefella] too much'. The fulldescent Councillor quoted above from the Sunday Sun newspaper (27 November 1983: 11) pointed out that: "The half-castes have taken the place of the missionaries [who had ceased formally to administer the Settlement that year] . . . . But they don't seem to respect the black man's culture which is being wiped out'. On the Northern Territory side of the border, there has arisen in recent years a conflict of interests between a large group of Aboriginal people claiming land on the basis of traditional ownership (under the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act 1976), and a number of mixeddescent families who are the lessees of surrounding pastoral properties. The people of mixed descent have either inherited their leases from now deceased European fathers, or in one case obtained their property via purchase some time ago. Many of the mixed-descent propertyowners consider themselves to be members of the language group concerned, some of them are married into the families claiming the land, and not all of them are opposed to the claim. However, there is a general apprehension among them that some or all of their stations will be claimed as traditional lands on the basis of Blackfella law. And despite the view of the traditional owners (predominantly of full descent) that this 'law' should appropriately regulate matters including land tenure, the lessees do not find that Blackfella law supports their material interests. On several occasions, members of one family have put their views about Blackfella law in this context quite directly. In 1974, the senior man was reported as saying that '. . . as for this Aboriginal land rights business, I don't believe in it. If I could do what I did through battling, the rest should be able to, too' (Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, April 6, 1974, cited in Middleton 1977: 102). More recently, in the context of the claim over an adjoining property to his own, this man stated several times (along with one of his sons and a non-Aboriginal supporter) that 'all this dreaming stuff [i.e. traditional religious belief] is finished'. A further statement from another of his sons, commenting in 1985 on his apprehensions about the forthcoming claim impinging on his own property (Katherine Times


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newspaper, December 5-11, 1985) was: 'We built this bloody place. It means mobs more to us than any traditional dreaming crap'. This type of disagreement cannot be said to derive specifically from the mixed-descent status of those lessee families opposing the traditional land claim. It derives most immediately from what these people regard as a real threat to their material interests. However, what is important to my argument is that the idiom of colour is used by those of full descent when giving their own commentary on the disagreement. As one influential claimant put it, 'all these Yellafella are against our claim', while another explained how 'all these Yellafella can't carry Blackfella law - they gammon [pretend] they Whitefella'. However, it is clear that mixed-descent status does not necessarily entail lack of interest in Blackfella law. A small number of mixeddescent older men throughout the region have been acknowledged as 'law men'. Others have been recognized as appropriately interested in, and respectful of, certain aspects of ceremonial life; in some Northern Territory cases it has been said of them that they 'carry law from [their full-descent] motherfs]'. Nevertheless, the attitude of such people has been regarded as distinctive among the broader Yellafella group - e.g.: 'No matter he Yellafella, he can sabby [understand and embrace] law!'. When three young men of mixed descent were among the eight Doomadgee young men initiated in 1982 at an outstation to the west, one 'law man' marvelled: 'That three Yellafella got me beat [i.e. have me very surprised] - that's big thing that [i.e. the initiation is highly important in terms of Blackfella law]'. Similarly, some Yellafellas at Doomadgee were known to consult 'Blackfella doctors' whose practices demonstrably draw on 'Blackfella law', and their action warranted specific comment: Even this Yellafella here, [he] believes on the Christian Mandagi [Whitefella] way, but when White doctor couldn't fix his wife he came to. . .[aprominentBlackfelladoctor.andsaidJ-'ril give you $50 if you can fix her'. In summary, Aboriginal thinking has conceived of a separable 'Yellafella' category of person within the Aboriginal population. From the perspective of those regarded as non-Yellafellas (i.e., essentially those of full Aboriginal descent), characteristics of Yellafellas have included their comparatively 'flash' lifestyle, material advantage, and lack of interest in Blackfella law. This view has entailed a degree of tension in social relations between Aborigines of full and mixeddescent. While the views of mixed-descent people have not been treated in detail in this paper, their accounts of their historical experience can be said briefly to have focused typically on how the system of European administration has sought to separate them from other Aborigines.



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Mixed-descent people speak much less than do full-descent people about comparative material benefits which they may have derived from European practices, but other aspects of their special treatment are spoken of quite openly. For example, one mixed-descent woman has described how during the 1950s, the missionary staff arranged for her to marry a man from a station across the border, despite her only occasional previous contact with him and her mother's opposition to the marriage. While this man 'had Aboriginal in him', he was 'raised as a European' and looked more White than Aboriginal, and the staff view was that they were looking after the girl's interests by organizing for her to 'leave [the] Reserve and go and live as a white person'. After thirty-one years away, this woman returned to assist her invalid full-descent mother, and in 1988 she now forcefully proclaims her Aboriginality: '. . . it doesn't matter how light the skin goes, you stem from the Aboriginal race and you'll always remain an Aboriginal'.12 However, other mixed-descent women who have had similar experiences have not returned to live among their full-descent relatives, and some have established lifestyles with non-Aboriginal husbands which are much closer to those of local working-class Europeans in material terms, than are the lifestyles of their fulldescent relatives who have remained in the region of their birth. An index of the situation of one such woman in a predominantly European town is that she was recently presented with a 'Citizen of the Year' Award for the local government Shire within which she lives (see Kimberley Echo newspaper, 7 November 1988: 14). Conclusion The concept of biologically inherited 'racial' identity has clearly been historically dominant in European ideology, and this has entailed practices which have enouraged the social separation of mixed-descent people. The influence of such European practices over the history of social relations between Aborigines of full and mixed descent is acknowledged by Aboriginal people of both full and mixed descent throughout the region. However, diversity among those referred to situationally as 'Yellafellas' is also recognized throughout the Aboriginal population. Specifically, some are distinguished as having 'never been flash', particularly those who were never historically removed from the influence of their mothers by European officialdom (either Police Protectors or missionaries); in the words of one old lady at Doomadgee, a group of younger mixed-descent people related to her quite closely (and resident in nearby Burketown) have 'never been flash, because . . . [their] mother was still alive . . . because they bin told'. Nevertheless, the tension entailed in these social relations continues to rest partly on resentment about the alleged relative economic


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betterment achieved by a substantial proportion of Yellafellas. In this region, skin colour is not simply recognized and labelled as are other observable features of persons, as has been argued by Tonkinson for Jigalong. For 'lighter' skin colour (and associated phenotypic evidence of non-Aboriginal ancestry) is, in discourse among those of full Aboriginal descent, variously the conceptual basis for an understood category of people who disproportionately have historically warranted negative evaluations of the kind described in this article. Certainly, many Yellafellas are known not to warrant this negative evaluation; to use the expression from the song verse with which I opened this article, it does not matter what their colour is because they are 'true fella[s]'. Furthermore, those who are conceived as behaving 'flash' and enjoying economic advantages are still regarded as part of the broad Aboriginal domain. But the conceptual category 'Yellafella' is tinged with an entrenched historical association of distinctive negative characteristics. Just as in the Caribbean case mentioned in introducing this paper, as a principle of classification among Aboriginal people the idiom of skin colour is not neutral in evaluative status terms; and this remains so, despite the not uncommon occurrence of relationships among Aboriginal people of full and mixed descent, where colour appears to be ignored. Aboriginal thinking on this issue has been influenced by European administrative and general social practices, but the further question is whether specific European ideas about 'racial' inheritance of characteristics have been embraced among Aboriginal people. There is some indication that similar 'racial ideology' constrains Aboriginal thinking, in the form of elicited comments about why certain Yellafellas have in the past pursued or do now pursue a 'flash' lifestyle, and hence do not generally 'class' themselves with Blackfellas. For reasons given will include references to their non-Aboriginal ancestry; e.g. the reason why a mixed-descent man was 'terrible flash when he young fella, fightin' against Blackfella', was described as due to his 'Chinese start I think'. Moreover, Aboriginal people not uncommonly discuss the behavioural characteristics of domesticated animals (cattle, horses, and especially dogs) in terms of their breeding and 'blood'; the prospective or current behaviour of one's own dogs can be regarded with apprehension or disapproval, and the reason for this bad behaviour described in terms of their having 'bad blood'. .Yet my conclusion is that, in general, Aboriginal thought does not attach inherited behavioural concomitants directly to skin colour or ancestry, in the way this view pervades European ideology. In the most general terms, like Whitefellas and Blackfellas, Yellafellas are said to have their 'own way'. But, unlike European ideology, the Aboriginal perspective on the origins of this 'way' is circumspect. Also, unlike what has been reported for Hope Vale settlement in the early 1970s, Aboriginal people in the southern Gulf region have not



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associated greater innate intellectual and cultural superiority with fairer skin colour. Moreover, Aboriginal speculation about reasons for the fact that 'Yellafella got his own way', has differed markedly from the European perspective by emphasizing the importance of mixeddescent people having been provided with different opportunities by the world of European officialdom and employers. Thus, in addressing the question of the ideological construction of common-sense knowledge about mixed-descent status in this study, it is clear that there has been a complex interplay between ideology and location in the system of colonial power-relations for all people in the region. Nevertheless, what emerges especially about European racial ideology is that it has derived directly from ideas which have been important in a particular intellectual tradition (cf. Banton 1987). It has been these imported ideas, concerning phenotypic features as indicative of intrinsic behavioural concomitants and social characteristics, which have reproduced distinctive European practices in relation to Aborigines of full and mixed descent respectively. What is clear about the Aboriginal view on this matter is the centrality of the material experience of historical subjection to state-sponsored colonial relations of economic and political domination. It is this material experience which has been so critical in the reproduction of Aboriginal conceptualization of the relationships between Blackfellas, Whitefellas and Yellafellas.

Notes "This is a revised version of a paper first presented at the Fifth International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, held at the Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences, Darwin, Australia, September 1988. I wish to acknowledge useful comments from Charles Husband, Rob Lambert, Michael Pinchee, Myrna Tonkinson and Robert Tonkinson. The research was partly funded by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 1. Throughout this paper, the term 'European' will be used to refer to nonAboriginal Australians and their cultural traditions, though the term 'non-Aboriginal' will also be used. Because the paper investigates the social significance of skin colour, I have found it best not to use the term 'White' as a general gloss for non-Aboriginal people and society in Australia. 2. The study region is shown on the map in Figure 1 as encompassing an area between Burketown (Queensland) in the east and Borroloola (Northern Territory) in the west. Apart from these two towns, the major centres of population are the Aboriginal Settlements of Doomadgee and Mornington Island. At both Settlements, and at the towns of Burketown and Borroloola, Aboriginal people have historically constituted the majority of the population; e.g. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for 1981 are that the proportion of Aboriginal residents was at least 90 per cent in the Settlements, 75 per cent at Borroloola and 52 per cent at Burketown. Fieldwork was conducted from 1978-83, focusing particularly on Doomadgee Mission, but during that time and since then, less intensive fieldwork has also been carried out at a number of locations


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throughout the region. My rough estimate of the total population of the region during the research period is approximately 2,500 to 3,000. 3. These data are part of a "Gulf Country History File', located at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Library (Canberra). 4. Personal communication from D. Belcher (20 January 1980; 27 January 1981), exSuperintendent of Mornington Island Mission. 5. For Queensland, see: The Aboriginals Protection & Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1901 (Sections 9 & 16), and The Aboriginals Preservation & Protection Acts 1939 to 1946 (Section 29). In the Northern Territory: see the Aboriginals Ordinance of 1918 (Sections 38, 45, 51 & 53), and the Welfare Ordinance 1953-60 (Section 64). 6. It was possible, in the Northern Territory, for 'half-castes' to be 'exempted' from the legislation concerning Aborigines from 1936 onwards (see Aboriginals Ordinance 1936, Section 2 [3A]; from 1943, full-descent Aborigines could also be exempted (Aboriginals Ordinance 1943 (Section 2). In Queensland, 'half-castes' only could be exempted from 1897 to 1939 (see The Aboriginals Protection . . . Acts 1897 to 1939, Section 33), then any individual could be exempted from 1939 to 1965 (see The Aboriginals Preservation . . . Acts 1939 to 1946, Section 5 [3]). 7. The occasional quip from a European about mixed-descent people inheriting 'the worst of both races' represents the same notion of biological determinism, though it implies a different view of such people. This type of comment is usually made when complaining about mixed-descent persons' aggressiveness towards non-Aboriginal people and it seems to have become more common among Europeans in some regions as people of mixed descent have increasingly become prominent in Aboriginal political organizations and movements. One suggestion (Hasluck 1977: 21) has been that this kind of prejudice against mixed-descent people may be 'the expression of a deep-seated Australian genetic myth about thoroughbreds and mongrels' (cf. Broome 1982: 93). However, in the Gulf Country region being discussed here, prejudice against mixeddescent people appears to have remained historically peripheral to the entrenched European notion about the assimilability of such people in comparison to those Aborigines of full descent. 8. Nor. in this region, is the term 'Yellafella' necessarily regarded as pejorative, despite its clear association with a social position intermediate between Blackfellas and Whitefellas (cf. Meggitt 1962: 34). However, while this term is used as one of reference, it is not normally used in addressing a person. Furthermore, it is not used routinely throughout those areas of Australia where the Aboriginal population is predominantly of mixed ancestry, and, like the term 'half-caste', it can be regarded as very offensive. Consider, for example, the bitter comment of a mixed-descent man from southeast Queensland, when visiting a major town just south of the study region, made with reference to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory: 'They call us Yellafellas . . . [and] they'd rather trust a White man than a Yellafella'. 9. Where quotations are drawn from field tapes, the tape number is given in parenthesis. Other quotations are drawn from field notes. 10. In the case of employment, 59 per cent of mixed-descent people were employed as compared to 27 per cent of full-descent people (of a sample of 291 individuals), indicating a best estimate of mixed-descent adults being just over twice as likely to be in employment at Doomadgee. On motor vehicles, the result was that of 273 full-descent adults, only 5 per cent (13) lived in a household at which was stationed one or more working vehicles; whereas of 48 mixed-descent adults, the comparable figure was 33 per cent (16). On housing, while the new dwellings constructed between 1972 and 1976 do not appear to have been distributed so as to favour mixed-descent people, of 22 further new houses occupied around mid-1983, nine went to mixed-descent couples and a further two went to families where one of the spouses was of mixed descent, indicating disproportionate occupancy by mixed-descent people in a population where they constitute only 15 per cent of all Aboriginal people. 11. In 1983, all fifteen Aboriginal pupils in a Special Program Grade for 'high


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achievers' in the school (also consisting of all non-Aboriginal pupils, numbering eight), were of mixed descent. Murray's (1982: 11) listing of the first two Doomadgee students to attend High School (in 1967) and the first to complete High School (in 1977), indicates that these persons were of mixed descent. 12. See the transcripts of evidence given to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, during hearings at Doomadgee, 21 October 1988 (pp. 382-3, 396).


References BANTON, M. 1983 Racial and Ethnic Competition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987 Racial Theories, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BOWIE, T. J. (Constable, Police Station Rankine River) 1944 Report re. Nicholson Patrol, to the Superintendent of Police, Alice Springs (28 April 1944), Australian Archives (NT Branch) CRS F1 Item: 43/55. BROOME, R. 1982 Aboriginal Australians - Black Response to White Dominance, Sydney: Allen and Unwin. COLLMANN, J. 1979 'Fringe-camps and the development of Aboriginal administration in Central Australia', Social Analysis, 2: 38-57. COWLISHAW, G. 1986 'Race for exclusion', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 22: 3-24. GRAHAM, C. (Sergeant, Police Station, Alice Springs) 1943 Nicholson Patrol (15 March 1943), Australian Archives (NT Branch) CRS Fl Item: 1943/55. HALL, S. 1985 'Religious ideologies and social movements in Jamaica", in R. Bocock and K. Thompson (eds). Religion and Ideology, Manchester: Manchester University Press. HASLUCK, P. 1977 Mucking About: An Autobiography, Melbourne, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. HUSBAND, C. 1987 'British racism: the construction of racial ideologies', in C. Husband (ed.), 'Race' in Britain - continuity and change, London: Hutchinson. KELLY, C. 1944 'Some aspects of culture contact in eastern Australia', Oceania, 15: 142-53. KYLE-LITTLE, S. H. (Patrol Officer, NT Department of Native Affairs) 1948 Report relative to mines and cattle stations employing native labour in the Borroloola district (16 December 1948), Australian Archives (NT Branch) F315 49/393 AIL LANGTON, M. 1981 'Urbanizing Aborigines: the social scientists' great deception'. Social Alternatives, 2 (2): 16-22. McGRATH, A. 1987 Born in the Cattle, Sydney: Allen and Unwin. MARKUS, A. 1982 'After the outward appearance: scientists, administrators and politicians', in B. Gammage and A. Markus (eds). All That Dirt - Aborigines 1938, Canberra: History Project Inc. 1988 'Australian Governments and the concept of race: an historical perspective', in M. De Lepervanche and G. Bottomley (eds). The Cultural Construction of Race, Sydney: Sydney Association for Studies in Society and History. MEGGITT, M. 1962 Desert People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. MIDDLETON, H. 1977 But Now We Want The Land Back, Sydney: New Age. MILES, R. 1984 'Marxism versus the sociology of "race relations"? ', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 7: 217-37. 1988 'Beyond the race concept', in M. De Lepervanche and G. Bottomley (eds). The Cultural Construction of Race, Sydney: Sydney Association for Studies in Society and History. MORGAN, G. 1985 'The analysis of race: conceptual problems and policy implications', New Community, 12: 285-94. MORRIS, B. 1985 'Cultural domination and domestic dependence: the Dhan-Gadi of


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