The Family and Cultural Identity in Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Chinese Ancestry: A Rural-Urban Divide

Abstract

Few empirical studies exist that specifically assess the impact of family on the development of cultural identity (Reference Group Orientation = RGO) in individuals of mixed cultural heritage. Moreover, no studies exist involving individuals of dual-minority heritage and the rural Australian, especially the Indigenous, experience. In this study, self-narrative (ethnographic interview) of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders with Chinese ancestry reveals the essential position of family in determining an individual’s RGO outcome. Virtually all the participants acknowledge that the rich Indigenous cultural life-experience and upbringing provided by their families influenced their development of unquestioned, stable Indigenous RGOs. However, layered problem-free onto their core (Indigenous) RGOs are varying degrees of “other-culture” (here Chinese) identifications. The study argues that the differential impact of past and present government policies across the rural-urban divide has proved an obstacle to the formation of bicultural RGOs in mixed-heritage family members.