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Older definitions of 'Aboriginal'

Definitions of based on percentages of ‘blood’ were used for decades by government departments and produced results that were both brutal and inconsistent. The historian Peter Read has described one such set of results:

In 1935 a fair-skinned Aboriginal man of part Indigenous descent was ejected from a hotel for being Aboriginal. He returned home on the mission station to find himself refused entry because he was not Aboriginal. He tried to remove his children but was told he could not because they were Aboriginal. He walked to the next town where he was arrested for being an Aboriginal vagrant and placed on the local reserve. During World War 11 he tried to enlist but was told he could not because he was Aboriginal. He went interstate and joined up as a non-Aboriginal. After the war he could not acquire a passport without permission because he was Aboriginal. He received exemption from the Aborigines Protection Act – and was told he could no longer visit his relations on the reserve because he was not Aboriginal. He was denied entry to the RSL Club because he was Aboriginal.