Andrew Bolt: Is it too much to ask for evidence of Aboriginal ancestry

We’re told it’s racist to ask whether some self-identifying Aborigines are in fact white, but can’t we ask for evidence?

In last year’s census, 90,000 people claimed they were Aboriginal who hadn’t in the previous census.

Once it was so racist to ask why some people called themselves Aboriginal that the Federal Court banned two of my articles.

But now even Sydney University has caved to Aboriginal groups wanting a crackdown on what they say is a rort. In last year’s census, 90,000 people – who hadn’t before – claimed they were Aboriginal.

What race people claim shouldn’t matter, except our governments stupidly insist it does, and award grants, jobs, services and even discount medicines to people calling themselves Aboriginal. At the same time, we’re told it’s racist to ask whether some self-identifying Aborigines are in fact as white as, well, Bruce Pascoe – leaving the door open to abuse.

It’s so bad that Sydney’s Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council complained to the Independent Commission Against Corruption about the number of Sydney University students identifying as Aboriginal by using just statutory declarations.

But Sydney University is not alone with this problem. The University of Technology Sydney made Pascoe its professor of Indigenous Knowledge as a member of three Aboriginal tribes – the Bunurong (or Boonwurrung), Yuin and a Tasmanian tribe.

Genealogical records show Bruce Pascoe’s ancestors are all of English descent. Picture: Lillian Watkins

Yet genealogical records show Pascoe’s ancestors are all of English descent. And his Aboriginality is rejected by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council.

Yet Melbourne University still made Pascoe a Professor of Indigenous Agriculture – a fake discipline largely invented by Pascoe using so-called evidence to claim Aborigines were farmers.

Or take Western Sydney University, which made Kerrie Doyle its associate dean of Indigenous Health as a “proud Winninninni woman”.

I wrote to the university and Doyle noting no record of the “Winninninni” existed, not even in Norman Tindale’s magisterial Aboriginal Tribes of Australia. Who were the “Winninninni”?

Doyle refused to answer, and the university insisted she was Aboriginal as “the daughter of (a) renowned Aboriginal artist”.

But genealogical records, compiled by dark-emu-exposed.org, revealed this “Aboriginal artist” was actually Doyle’s adoptive father, marrying her mother in the year Doyle turned 16. What’s more, his ancestors were all of British or Irish descent.

Doyle today claims she’s of two real tribes as well: the Budjeri and Cadigal. That means her son won a $50,000 a year Indigenous scholarship at her university in all innocent faith. Doyle may truly have Aboriginal ancestry, but is it too much to ask for evidence?