Andrew Bolt: ‘This Aboriginal identity craze is too much’

Brittany Higgins is now Aboriginal, too? I’m not calling her a fake but I wonder how anyone could claim she is in any meaningful way Indigenous.

Brittany Higgins is now Aboriginal too? Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Brittany Higgins is now Aboriginal, too? And even got a job from Victoria’s version of Labor’s Aboriginal-only Voice?

Dear God. This Aboriginal identity craze is just too much.

And wait until I tell you about the latest very senior “Aboriginal” academic.

But let’s start with Higgins, whose story helps to explain why so many academics in particular say they’re Aboriginal when they’re not.

Higgins, you’ll know, controversially claimed she’d been raped in Parliament House by a Liberal colleague. He denied it, but she still won up to $3 million in compensation.

It was extraordinary. Higgins didn’t have to prove either the rape or the nasty treatment she claimed she’d got from the Morrison Liberal Government before the Albanese Labor Government gave this fortune to the woman who’d help them to smash the Liberals.

But Higgins had meanwhile hit a problem. Where could she find another job?

No problem! A friend working at Victoria’s First Peoples Assembly told her to apply there to be a media adviser, and apparently told her bosses Higgins had Aboriginal ancestry.

Brittany Higgins identifies as an Indigenous Australian. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Text messages uncovered by the Daily Mail show that friend, Emma Webster, then asking Higgins what “mob” she was, adding the Assembly’s “co-chair and CEO are curious”.

Higgins replied that her grandfather was connected “to either the Nyawigi or Gugu Badhun people”. But “we’re not entirely sure which one” and her grandfather “didn’t want to progress any further” with inquiries after reconnecting with his “siblings from the orphanage”.

Higgins added: “We’ve all collectively as a family respected his wishes”, but “my grandma has all the documentation if you’d like”.

Be clear: I’m NOT calling Higgins a fake. Her grandfather may indeed have Aboriginal ancestry, but I wonder how anyone could claim Higgins is in any meaningful way Aboriginal herself, based on such uncertain connections.

Higgins got the job, but many other Australians who get jobs after claiming to be Aboriginal can’t even wave at any documents to supposedly prove it.

I’ve given examples before: author Bruce Pascoe, of course, now Professor of “Indigenous Agriculture” at Melbourne University; and Professor Kerrie Doyle of the non-existent “Winninninii” tribe. Both won’t explain why their genealogies show no Aboriginal ancestors.

But let me now introduce you to yet another academic who has longed claimed to be Aboriginal.

Margo Neale is an Australian National University adjunct professor, and head of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges at the National Museum of Australia.

Professor Margo Neale.

She’s been one of the gatekeepers of Aboriginal culture, organising exhibitions of Aboriginal art and working at the National Gallery of Australia and the state galleries of NSW and Queensland.

She’s big. She’s shared in seven Australian Research Council grants, and her many books include the Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture.

Part of Neale’s influence comes from claiming she’s Aboriginal herself – descended on her mother’s side from the “Mirning-language speakers of the Albany region, Western Australia”.

She’s also claimed she’s “Aboriginal descent, from Kulin nation with Gumbayngirr clan connections”, and even “clan-affiliated” with the Wiradjuri of NSW.

The trouble is that Neale’s family tree – now assembled by professional genealogists at dark-emu-exposed.org – suggests she’s actually 100 per cent of Irish, Welsh and English stock.

The researchers couldn’t find a single Aborigine among Neale’s ancestors, after consulting birth records, death records, newspaper clippings of family events, and the family trees and photographs posted on ancestry.com by two of Neale’s very close relatives.

Brittany Higgins’ grandfather is connected to either the Nyawigi or Gugu Badhun people.

Dark-emu-exposed.org wrote to Neale asking her if they’d overlooked something, but got no answer.

Then I wrote, asking Neale to identify her Aboriginal ancestor. I eventually received a response offering no name or evidence: “Aboriginal histories, as you know, can indeed be tricky particularly if one relies on western records during the long period of disruption and displacement …

“Aboriginal births, deaths and marriages were largely unrecorded outside missions and pastoral properties in earlier days at least, or inaccurately recorded for spurious purposes or surnames changed for legitimacy reasons.”

I’ve since asked Neale again which ancestor was Aboriginal and had their birth record inaccurately recorded.

I’m still waiting, but someone did meanwhile send me one university document which helps to explain why so many academics are now Aborigines about as pale as Higgins.

It was a Queensland University advertisement, seeking a lecturer in maths and physics, but insisting “the occupant must be of Aboriginal and / or Torres Strait Islander descent”. I’ve since found many more such racist ads.

How mad. No wonder a great race circus overwhelms even our universities and all common sense.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: ‘This Aboriginal identity craze is too much’