Dutch aboriginality...

Andrew Bolt - or Andronicus Van Bolt as he is for some strange reason known in my office - is in trouble. Every second person you meet in the street is angry with him over his published opinions about Aboriginality. He wondered aloud if someone who has virtually no Aboriginal blood can claim to be Aboriginal. He wondered why some writers, artists, academics and activists claim Aboriginality when they were more Caucasian, at least in terms of their DNA, hairdos, looks and surnames. He commented ''I'm not saying any of those I've named chose to be Aboriginal for anything but the most heartfelt and honest of reasons. I certainly don't accuse them of opportunism.'' Which is the nicest way I've ever heard anyone ever accuse anyone else of opportunism in my life.

Yet this - I now realize all too clearly - is just a smoke screen. The real topic here is not Aboriginality in its Australian guise, but aboriginality full stop.

Andrew Bolt, born here in Australia, is of Dutch parentage. He once said "Like most of you, I'm indigenous. I was born here and have nowhere else to go." If one is indigenous one is born or produced naturally in a land or region. The term usually applies to aboriginal inhabitants or natural products. Lower case 'a' aboriginals are people who are strictly native, if we are sticking strictly to dictionary definitions. Which makes me realize that none of the writers, artists, academics, activists or Bolts mentioned herein are either indigenous or aboriginal, in the strictest sense. They are all - more or less - recent imports.

That we live in a time when it is trendier to be Aboriginal than it is to be Dutch should not cause us so much fuss. Perhaps if Mr. Bolt only said nice things about people more of us would want to identify as Dutch, regardless of how much or how little Dutch blood we had.