Creating a legal identity: Aboriginal people and the assimilation census.

The Commonwealth government of Australia introduced the policy of 'assimilation' in the early 1950s. This policy aimed to merge Aboriginal people with other Australians. In 1953 the government drafted legislation that would cease to discriminate against Aboriginal people on the basis of their race, but would instead discriminate against Aboriginal people whose social status rendered them 'wards'. This reclassification process ultimately affected almost every Aboriginal person in the Northern Territory. However, the assimilation policy could not be implemented until a census had been undertaken of all Aboriginal people in the jurisdiction to determine which people would be listed as wards. The full implementation of the assimilation policy was delayed as the census took over four years to complete. The government employed patrol officers whose role included locating, naming and registering all Northern Territory Aboriginal people. Many obstacles confronted the patrol officers and the administrators in the completion of the census. This article tells the story of the census. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]