Here in Australia everyone from employers to educational authorities to survey-makers to banks want to know if I am of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. No other questions about race are asked. I want to know why it matters. Is it like an affirmative action thing or a “we don’t want their business” thing? If I checked the box for yes, what would happen?
It probably depends who’s asking. It could relate to employment statistics - I believe my employer gets extra brownie points if it can meet some sort of “target” for ATSI employees. Universities ask similar questions when students are enrolling for much the same reason I think. A lot of other statistics are broken down by ATSI/non-ATSI group: income, health, welfare etc.
I think there might be an ‘Affirmative Action’ component, at least to some degree.
For example, it is my understanding that educational institutions employ some types of ‘Special Consideration’ criteria for ATSI students in order to encourage them to undertake further education.
Good thing too IMHO.
Years ago at work, one of my workmates had a conversation like this with me.
He asked, “Want to come to the races on Thursday?”
“Haven’t got any leave left.”
“Take National Aborigines Day, I am.”
“That’s OK for you, how can I do that?”
“Go tell personnel that you are a Koori too.”
“May be a bit difficult Jeff. I was born in England and, well, look at me - don’t you think I’m a bit pale.”
“Doesn’t matter mate, once you tell them that you are a Koori they have to accept it. It would infringe EEO regulations to require you to prove it.”
Subsequently when I checked with personnel they admitted that Jeff was right, all I had to do was start ticking the box on forms and I would become a Koori. I never did have the nerve though.
Incredible. I imagine if enough whites start abusing that, it will bring an administration clampdown. If the bottom line comes down to allocation of resources, if people or obtaining goodies through fraud… How do the Kooris feel about that? If I were one of them I’d want some accountability in the system.
IIRC, in the USA you can’t claim any of the governmental perks of Indian ancestry without tribal documentation. This is important to prevent ripping off the system, but it causes problems for Indians who missed the tribal boat. In southern Maryland, the Piscataway or Brandywine Indians never got their tribe officially formed according to Uncle Sam. The Indian Affairs people say they’re triracial so they don’t count. Even so, there’s this Indian population in Maryland that’s survived all 300 years there without official recognition, so I don’t know, maybe they’re out of luck when it comes to obtaining Indian bennies. I went to one of their powwows.
IIRC you are Aboriginal if other aborigines accept that you are. So you can tick the box, but if anyone checked you’d be scuppered.
It’s also about epidemiology- how do they know if the situation is improving if they have no way to measure it?
So they measure it by the % of ATSI who own houses, have salaried employment, 3rd level education, live beyond 65. Ticking the boxes if it didn’t apply to you would be doing ASTIs a disservice by screwing up the data.
I’ve never heard of National Aborigines Day.
What date is it held? 
There have been incidents where one group of Kooris deny the aboriginality of another group of Kooris over entitlements in Land Rights cases. However during the 1990s the number of people identifying themselves as Kooris increased at 25% more than the birth rate of children born to Koori parents.
Don’t know that year, whenever it was probably July or September.
I don’t know whether you misunderstood or were misinformed, but whether or not an Indian tribe receives federal recognition doesn’t depend simply on the current racial makeup of the constituents. Federal recognition is based upon a whole series of requirements that are supposed to illustrate that the tribe has maintained cultural continuity. Unfortunately I can’t link to the list because most of the info on the BIA web site is currently unavailable.
The Indians In Maryland that you encountered were probably related to the Lenni Lenape (Delaware Indians). AFAIK, the Lenape groups remaining in east coast states (from New York down through Maryland) do not have federal recognition in large part because these people are descendents of Lenape that intermarried heavily with whites (particularly early Dutch settlers; Dutch surnames are quite common) and free blacks over the past 400 years or so, and can’t demonstrate that they maintained sufficient continuity of cultural practices/language/etc. up to the present. (I don’t want to get into the debate here over the difficulty of meeting all the criteria.) In contrast, other Lenape groups that were forced westward (e.g., the Delaware Nation of Oklahoma) do have federal recognition. State-level recognition is possible, although it obviously doesn’t grant all the same benefits that federal recognition of the tribe would bring.
Basically there are a range of reasons, none of which are sinister and most of which have been referred to above. My impression is that rather than positive incentives, it is data collection to monitor the progress of schemes to improve the lot of ATSI people. Employment is a good indicator. Although in one place I worked it was also beneficial for language purposes to have an ATSI person on team (which it didn’t).
As to population. I too was sceptical, knowing Melissa Behrendt, who is as blond and pale as QLD permits. However, she identifies as Aboriginal following her upbringing in rural Qld. Much of rural Australian towns are bifurcated into the ATSI and the Anglo-Irish communities. Having a partly Aboriginal heritage Ms Behrendt was not accepted by the A-I community and grew up as an Aboriginal person, appearance notwithstanding. I image it’s not an uncommon story and explains the apparently surprising growth in ATSI numbers. That and a great number of people self-identifying.
There may be a cultural shift behind that. My knowledge of Australia’s laws about Aboriginals consists of having watched the movie Rabbit Proof Fence, but I know the US’s laws about people with part-black or part-Native American ancestry have changed quite a bit in the last 50 years.
When I was 28, I found out that I am 1/32 Cherokee on my dad’s side. Nowadays, that’s just an interesting conversational tidbit when the subject turns to genealogy. If we had some more documentation, it might actually be helpful to me- I could maybe in theory benefit from affirmative action. Fifty years ago, however, if that were common knowledge, my sister and I would not have been allowed to go to public schools that were set aside for whites in some states, and we might have been restricted in who we could marry in some states, as well as some other restrictions. There was, in other words, a significant downside in some states to admitting that you had black or Native American ancestors. That’s no longer the case, so some people who have been “passing for white” for many years are now willing to admit that they have non-white ancestors.
There’s a special week I think, sometime in June or July.
Sounds pretty similar to the situation in New Zealand. When I lived there I was a bit surprised to discover that I could get myself onto the Maori electoral roll simply be ticking the box. I don’t know if it’s still the same now.
sunfish, I didn’t say racial makeup was the sole criterion, just that the Piscataway had been denied and that was the reason I recall hearing given for it.
The triracial peoples who’ve had a hell of a hard time getting recognized as Indian (in Virginia) or denied (in Maryland) are a local phenomenon in the Tidewater area. Maybe the blend came about due to historical circumstances, it being the first area in the country to import slaves, at a time when Indians were still all over the place.
Apologies to Oz and the rest of the world for acting like everything is all about Norteamerica. My bad. Carry on.