Battle over Aboriginal status goes to the UN

A bitter debate over what it means to be Aboriginal has broken out in Tasmania, the Australian island state where 19th-century British settlers came close to wiping out the indigenous population.

The dispute, which is to be referred to the United Nations, goes to the heart of the traumatic past endured by Tasmania's Aborigines, who numbered about 5000 when the British first settled what was then known as Van Diemen's Land in 1803.

At stake is millions of dollars' worth of public funds, including special education grants, cheaper housing, health care and legal aid.

Until the 1970s it was widely held that the island's Aborigines had been wiped out through a combination of disease and frontier clashes with settlers during what was known as the Black War, in the 1830s.

Their presumed annihilation was frequently but wrongly cited in history books as the world's only successful example of genocide.

But while the last "full-blood" Aborigine died in 1876, left behind were many Tasmanians of mixed race as a result of Aboriginal women being taken as "wives", sometimes forcibly, by white soldiers, settlers and convicts.

After decades of hiding their Aboriginal origins or seeing it as a mark of shame, they now confidently proclaim their indigenous ancestry.

In many cases, however, they have fair hair and blue eyes and are almost indistinguishable from white Australians, unlike the much darker skinned Aborigines of the mainland.

The fight has pitched Tasmania's main Aboriginal group, known as the Palawa, against a rival clan they dismiss as upstarts, the Lia Pootah, or Little River people.

The Palawa claim that Lia Pootah is a made-up Aboriginal name and that its members are white Australians who are only claiming to be indigenous in order to claim generous government handouts.

"They don't have a drop of Aboriginal blood in their veins," said Michael Mansell, legal adviser to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, which represents 6000 Palawa.

"They are fakes and their claims to be Aboriginal are fanciful. A lot of white people see an opportunity to defraud the system by claiming to be Aboriginal."

The Palawa argue that they are descended from the last surviving group of Aborigines, who were removed to the Furneaux Islands in Bass Strait, between Tasmania and the mainland of Australia, in the 1830s.

For their part the Lia Pootah say they are the descendants of mixed race Aborigines who remained on Tasmania as domestic servants or wives to white settlers.

One of the group's leaders, Kaye McPherson, says her great-grandmother was an Aboriginal woman called Teen Toomele Menenneye, although she concedes she has no documentary evidence as proof. She ascribes her white skin and Caucasian features to English and Irish ancestors.

"I'm not saying I'm 100 per cent Aboriginal but I have Aboriginal ancestry and Aboriginal cultural heritage," McPherson, a cultural historian, said.

"Aborigines in other parts of Australia have walked up to me and said they can see the Aboriginal inside me, despite my white skin. It's a crucial part of me. We are not motivated by a welfare mentality and we are not asking for handouts."

The antipathy between the two groups erupted three years ago, when there were fierce arguments over an attempt to set up an Aboriginal electoral role by the now defunct indigenous body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

The feud deepened earlier this month when the Tasmanian Government introduced new laws setting out a stricter definition of Aboriginality.

The Lia Pootah claim the legislation has stripped 14,000 Tasmanians of their Aboriginal status.

"It's a new form of genocide," McPherson said.

The group has lodged a series of documents with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva, demanding the Tasmanian Government recognises their Aboriginal origins and restores their entitlement to benefits.

"It's a faction fight over political control and money," said Greg Barns, the Lia Pootah's lawyer. "There doesn't appear to be any room for compromise on the part of the Palawa."