Stop insulting Aboriginal people or we may have to consider calling white Australians half-caste convicts. The Commonwealth Parliament defined an Aboriginal person as 'a person who is a member of the Aboriginal race of Australia', a definition which was still in use in the early 1990s.

Victoria: any person of Aboriginal descent.

Western Australia: a person with more than a quarter of Aboriginal blood.

Since legislation for Indigenous people was a state matter, each state found its own definition for 'Aboriginal'. Instead, authorities tried to find alternate definitions of Aboriginal identity, which, however, were still influenced by colonial thinking. In fact, racism lies just beneath the surface and it 'bubbles out' when Aboriginal identity is discussed. Today these words are considered offensive and racist. These 'one-dimensional models of Aboriginality' pervaded literature of that time and were used in an effort to categorise Aboriginal people to determine if they were allowed or denied certain benefits.

a ' octoroon' as someone whose great-grandfather or great-grandmother was Aboriginal.

a ' quadroon' or ' quarter-caste' as someone with an Aboriginal grandfather or grandmother,.

a ' half-caste' as someone with one white parent,.

a ' full-blood' as a person who had no white blood,.

įrom 1910 to the 1940s white people classified Indigenous people into castes. Caste categories in an identity card used in the 1940s.

Victoria 2 accepted culture