Page 368 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

29 Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Border Theory and Justice 343

and complete, and always in the act of becoming, open to change, and desirous of
pursuing errant and unpredictable paths. Clearly, this type of discussion, which
highlights the mobility of borders and the dynamic nature of the border place or
zone, has strong implications for how science education has conceptualised borders
and border crossing within its discourses to date.

Border Drawing by Appellations

It is not always easy to detect progress in Australia’s dealings with its indigenous people.
It requires a long view back and a long view forward. Sometimes the view is not clear.
(French 2007, n.p.)
One example of the need for more complex views of borders comes in the osten-
sibly simple task of naming Indigenous Australians because when one names
something, it places it within linguistic or semantic borders. Arguably, the Ur-act
of language is appellation (or naming), or indeed setting up the boundary, for until
something is named, it doesn’t really exist. This is similar to Rodger’s (2008) argument
above that “(s)pace is conceptually nothing and everything until borders are formed
(thereby) creating a bordered space or place” (p. 23). Hence, we are immediately
confronted with the fluid nature of language, and the constant ebb of meaning, hue
and connotation with which all attempts at labelling is imbued. Western science’s
intercession into questions of what it is to be an Aborigine began with the anthro-
pologists’ now thoroughly discredited typological model of racial classification.
Within this scheme, Australian Aborigines were profiled as “Australoids” due to their
physical appearances and language families. Indeed, Gardiner-Garden (2000) sug-
gests that over the decades since white settlement, there have been over 67 attempts
at definitions or categorisations (or indeed, bordering) of Aboriginal people.
More recently, Bin-Sallik (2008) along with Eve Fesl from the Gabi Gabi people
of southwest Queensland and Lowitja O’Donoghue from the Yankunytjatjara tribe of
northwest South Australia (a twice-named Australian of the Year and the inaugural
chairperson of the now dissolved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission),
calls for the use of the term “Aborigine.” Fesl (1986) notes that historically, the use
of Aboriginal as a noun (most commonly with a small “a”) rather than the adjective
it should have been, attempted to erase Indigenous Australians’ identities and
cultures, categorising them being a non-existent people. “The word ‘aborigine’ refers
to an indigenous person of any country. If it is to be used to refer to us as a specific
group of people, it should be spelt with a capital ‘A’, i.e., ‘Aborigine’” (n.p.). Lowitja
O’Donoghue agrees, fearing also that the more recent appellation of “Indigenous
Australians” can rob traditional peoples of their identities due to some non-Aboriginal
people co-opting the term to identify Australia as their birthplace (Salna 2008).
From an Australian legal perspective, which is often used as the ultimate arbiter of
such matters within society writ large, a person is Aborigine if they meet the require-
ments set out in a specific body of case law. One statement of this definition is to be
found by Justice Dean in Tasmania v The Commonwealth (1983), “A person of