Page 369 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

344 L. Carter and N. Walker

Aboriginal descent, albeit mixed, who identifies himself as such and who is recog-
nized by the Aboriginal community as an Aboriginal” (p. 243). While the implica-
tions of this three-limbed test are discussed in detail elsewhere (e.g., Plevitz and Croft
2003), this legal approach to difficulties of naming seemed to countenance a genetic
or self or community enacted Aboriginality. Justice Dean’s view required as a precon-
dition, a test of biological descent, albeit a descent made hybrid by many generations
of miscegenation. This was problematic for many of those living Bhabha’s (1994)
bordered lives who lacked records to prove their Aboriginal ancestry. This lead to
Justice Merkel, in 1998, defining Aboriginal descent as technical rather than biologi-
cal, thereby eliminating a genetic requirement. The definitional difficulties however
don’t end here as the other two parts implicitly entrain the possibility of an individual
renouncing his/her Aboriginality (who identifies himself as such), or being cast out
from the definitional pool by his/her peers (who is recognized by the Aboriginal
community as an Aborigine), but maintains their own Aboriginality.
Hence, though semantic and linguistic appellations by their very nature are
attempts to subsume and homogenise, in the naming we are given a false sense of
a unitary concept where there is, in fact, not one. Rather, these multiple attempts at
Aboriginal appellation and their ensuring debates call to mind Bauman (2001) and
Beck et al.’s (2003) discussion of the very arbitrariness of boundaries and their
drawing. As we attempt to fix and unfix, Bauman’s (2001) view seems very apt here
when he describes the messy flux of the boundary-drawing process itself where
things are “set against each other, compared, scrutinized, criticized, tested, valued
or de-valued” (p. 138) and left to battle it out in “a vast theatre of boundary wars – a
battleground of endless ‘reconnaissance skirmishes’ … (where) … there is no plau-
sible finishing line… each successful challenge throws open new battlegrounds and
prompts further challenges” (p. 141).
So, we plough on recognising the quagmire of borders, boundaries and their defi-
nitional spaces. It is hoped that by using some of the names here as synonyms, the act
of slippage only reinforces the view of boundaries in flux. Nonetheless, as Aborigine
is the term selected by the people themselves, it is the term most commonly employed
in this chapter. However, the irony of the preferred term coming from the Latin ab
meaning “from” and origio meaning “origin” or “beginning” does not escape us!

Border Spaces and Aboriginal TEK

We turn now to our second example of the complexity of borders and we look at
the layered border zones/spaces in a story of TEK taken from Dennis Foley’s 2001
ethnographic text, Repossession of Our Spirit: The Traditional Owners of Northern
Sydney. As a Koori man matrilineally connected to the Gai-mariagal people whose
traditional lands lie around the northern harbour and beaches of Sydney, and
whose father is a descendant of the Capertee/Turon River people of the Wiradjuri,
Professor Foley is, in many ways, an excellent example of someone living Bhabha’s
(1994) bordered life. A research academic at the Australian Institute of Social
Inclusion and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle (TAISIW), Foley is also a