An Indigenous leader says the ‘identity fraud’ of people falsely claiming Aboriginal heritage is ‘out of control’.
Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council CEO Nathan Moran told Sky News interviewer Andrew Bolt on Monday night that over ’40 per cent of people who have identified as Aboriginal were not born as Aboriginal’.
Since the 1990s the number of people identifying as Aboriginal has grown much quicker than the birth rates for Indigenous children, Mr Moran said.
Mr Moran, whose Council covers large areas of Sydney, said a surge in ‘identity fraud’ was causing the ‘bastardisation of (Aboriginal) culture and heritage’.
‘Those who might have discovered an ancestor then start speaking or claiming to speak as an authority over and above the legislated democratic organisation like ourselves,’ Mr Moran said.
Some of the individuals claiming Indigenous ancestry have been forming ‘self-serving private corporations’.
‘It’s out of control the amount of people who are self-identifying, assuming roles and jobs and in some cases going on to provide policy advice, or to speak as authorities for Aboriginal people when they’re not known to be Aboriginal,’ Mr Moran told Bolt.
Indigenous identity has become a hot button issue after Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek controversially blocked the building of a tailings dam to service a gold mine in central west NSW to protect Indigenous cultural heritage.
Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council CEO Nathan Moran said people ‘fraudulently’ claiming to be Indigenous ‘was out of control’
The Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council supported the project but the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation opposed it – and that was one of the reasons Ms Plibersek decided to block the McPhillamys project’s dam proposal.
Mr Moran has previously called for a widespread adoption of the Commonwealth’s three-part identity test to deter Australians from falsely identifying as indigenous.
That test involves three steps – that the applicant must prove they are of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person and are accepted as such by the community in which they live, or formerly lived.
A person can prove they are accepted by an Aboriginal community by providing a letter from their local Aboriginal Land Council or a registered Aboriginal community organisation.
Previously the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council complained to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption about the number of students at the University of Sydney identifying as indigenous using statutory declarations.
Mr Moran said there were multiple issues with people who usurp the authority and identity of Aboriginal people because it compromises ‘our ability to speak for our culture and heritage’ and was ‘the undermining of our identity’.
He called for the end of stat decs being used for ‘self-identification’.
‘It’s something we’d hope that government could address by simply closing the door on self identification,’ Mr Moran said.
‘Not allowing people to bypass the law, enforcing people to adhere to the law, enforce the law to ensure that people if they claim they’re Aboriginal are certified and verified by Aboriginal people for Aboriginal land rights.’
Who speaks for local Indigenous people has been a controversial issue in the blocking of the location of a dam proposed for the McPhillamys gold project in NSW by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek