Two Mates and You're Aboriginal?

In 2024 we showed that Professor Bronwyn Carlson was mistaken to have believed that, “on my mother’s side, we are Aboriginal from South Australia.”

After our research was made public, Professor Carlson was also contacted by Andrew Bolt of the Bolt Report [watch from 01:40], who asked a set of questions regarding her Aboriginality. He was ignored, but a strange thing happened - the Professor quietly amended her online profile at Macquarie University to show that she was no longer describing herself as an “Aboriginal woman”. She appears to have chosen to revert to another identity, that of being just `Australian.’

But this got us wondering - how did she get recognised by others as Aboriginal in the first place?

Using a Freedom of Information (FOI) request we located evidence that suggested she first officially pronounced her Aboriginality when applying in 2013 for the Indigenous-only Stanner Award. She provided no family tree, nor any Certificate of Aboriginality to satisfy the application, but rather she just used “two culturally appropriate referees” to vouch that they believed that she was Aboriginal.

The names of those two referees were redacted for privacy reasons from the FOI bundle sent to us (Figure 2). We do not know who they are.

Figure 1 - Announcement of the 2013 Stanner Award, available to Indigenous applicants only. Her claims to Aboriginality are given further credence by the award being presented by the three, well known Aboriginal men in the photo. In addition, the article is written by former AIATSIS reporter John Paul Janke, who now is a presenter at SBS/NITV. Janke’s acceptance of her as Aboriginal adds to the credibility of her claims. No wonder Carlson had such a big smile after fooling all of them.

Figures 2A&B - Excerpt from Bronwyn Carlson’s Application form for the 2013 Stanner Award. Source: Full Application Form here

Although she is no longer `Aboriginal’ on her Macquarie University website (which came with her changing her profile picture to a new ‘photo in the pink top’), her profile at some other sites still records her as being Aboriginal. This is despite these new sites having been amended with the new ‘photo in the pink top’, which only appeared after she was challenged on the Bolt Report.

It seems that she may be only notifying her identity change on some websites and only to some organisations. Is this because she may be embarrassed, or perhaps it would create financial difficulties for her, to inform other organisations, such as those funded by the Government - the ADM +S (Figure 3A&B) or the ARC Grants board - from who she has received four large grants, totalling some $1.7million? (Figures 4, 5, 6 & 7).

These four grants are Australian Research Council Discovery Indigenous grants, which we understand are only available to project teams where the lead researcher is an “Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander” (Figure 9).

Figures 3A&B - Source

Figure 4 - First ARC Discovery Indigenous Grant: $218,000. Carlson is listed as a “CI”, which is the “Chief Investigator” for the project. We understand this person must be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Source

Figure 5 - Second ARC Discovery Indigenous Grant - $402,000. Carlson is listed as a “CI”, which is the “Chief Investigator” for the project. We understand this person must be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Source

Figure 6 - Third ARC Discovery Indigenous Grant - $530,000. Carlson is listed as a “CI”, which is the “Chief Investigator” for the project. We understand this person must be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Source

Figure 7 - Fourth ARC Discovery Indigenous Grant - $570,000. Carlson is listed as a “CI”, which is the “Chief Investigator” for the project. We understand this person must be Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Source

Figure 8 - Professor Carlson is on the Selection Committee for the ARC grants, presumably due to her Aboriginality credentials when selecting winners of the Discovery Indigenous Grants. - Source

Figure 9 - Guidelines suggesting that projects need to be ‘led by’ principal investigators who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders to be eligible for Discovery Indigenous Awards. Source

And the great irony in the whole ‘Professor Bronwyn Carlson story’ is that she is feted as something of an academic expert in Aboriginality and fakes! (Figure 10)

Figure 10 - The irony of the story of Professor Bronwyn Carlson - the academic who wrote the book on Aboriginal Identity actually turned out to be a `fake’ herself. Source

Summary

So when people now contact us asking how these ‘fakes’ get recognised as Aboriginal, the answer we give is that quite possibly all they needed were ‘two mates’, who said that they were ‘culturally appropriate’ whatever that means, to act as their referees. And hey presto!, their career at university as an Aboriginal academic can proceed.