The definition of Aboriginal has shifted from race to association. The problem with this nicety is that the essence of being an associational Aboriginal has also shifted. Once, being Aboriginal meant being bound by circumstances and obligations – hunter-gatherer, animist, ruled by senior men, unable to move freely, both geographically and socially within the tiny society – constrained beyond belief. Most Aborigines are not so bound; their associations are nothing like what made them Aboriginal. Most Aborigines are free to explore and live as their forebears never conceived, yet contemporary Aborigines want to be revered as the constrained archetypal. Most have learned about their forebears; they have not lived it.

Imagine the 40 pro vice-chancellors (Indigenous) in senior positions at universities across Australia. How embarrassing that they claim heritage, yet their good fortune rests on its abandonment. Their remit is to indigenise the curriculum. This should mean re-imposing the boundaries of their forebears’ lives, but in truth it means inventing Disneyland versions of those lives – smoking ceremonies, ‘knowledges’, and other such guff. Their Aboriginal essence is a charade. Their award of a ‘designated position’ cannot plausibly rest on associational grounds; it can only rest on one ground, DNA.

As an example of the gap between essence and pretence, consider the Northern Territory class action, Dann v. CEOH, in which 73 public housing communities are suing the NT CEO of Housing, the landlord, for failing to provide a standard of housing that, they argue, he is legally bound to deliver. Only one per cent of Aborigines in these communities own or mortgage their home. The average for Aborigines in the rest of Australia is 41 per cent. Our vice-chancellors are highly likely to own their home (or homes). While Aborigines constitute only three per cent of Australians, in these communities they make up 88 per cent of the population. In smaller communities and outstations, the proportion of Aboriginal people is likely even higher.

Not only are these communities largely Aboriginal, but their inhabitants are also more Aboriginal. While 57 per cent of Aborigines in Australia have Anglo ancestry, in these communities it is only one per cent. While 84 per cent of Aborigines in Australia speak only English at home, only five per cent do so in these communities. It is highly improbable that pro vice-chancellors (Indigenous) speak a native language. They live in the city, are not animist, are not bound by the dictates of old men, and certainly do not live in an economy that could supply them with only the bare necessities of life, a short, nasty one at that. On what basis can they claim to be Aboriginal?

If our vice-chancellors and the entire heavy bureaucracy of the Aboriginal industry are to play the game of expressive racism, why not play them at their own game and take them at their essence, their DNA? After all, it’s what the High Court of Australia decided in Love – that once a drop of blood, always was and always will be Aboriginal – as its measure of a non-alien non-Australian.

The three criteria for Aboriginality first appeared in Commonwealth v. Tasmania in 1983 and were adopted in Mabo in 1992 as Membership of the Indigenous people depends on biological descent from the Indigenous people and on mutual recognition of a particular person’s membership by that person and by the elders or other persons enjoying traditional authority among those people.

At times, Aboriginal interests in native title cases have insisted on descent alone to exclude claimants, and at other times to ignore race and include those with only an associational claim. Identification follows interests; if there is money, the definition changes.

Putting aside the sordidness of identification, the shift from race to association is understandable. It was racist to exclude people from society on the basis of race, and still is. No one is now excluded from society on that basis. Some are barred because of their behaviour. Some are barred from employment because they lack skills. But where there is a designated Aboriginal position, as with our pro vice-chancellors, race re-enters the field, regardless of merit, and effectively turns back the clock.

Those who seek to profit from race should be required to prove beyond doubt their association, which, by law, includes descent. DNA is a reliable indicator of descent. For around $100, DNA can be extracted from a small saliva sample and typed for up to one million genetic variants (single-nucleotide polymorphisms – or ‘snips’). Multivariate genetic analysis can then provide an exceptionally detailed account of ancestry with one-per-cent accuracy or better – as subscribers to ancestry.com or 23andMe.com know.

The accuracy depends on the size of the reference samples from the various ancestral groups – a reference sample of 500 will provide a more accurate estimate than one of 100. In Finland, where there are large reference samples from across the country, the tests are so accurate that they can tell which valley you are from.

Among Australian Aborigines, where ancestral ties run even deeper, there is no reason to think one could not differentiate one tribe from another or even estimate proportions of admixture between two or more tribes, given sufficiently large reference samples.

A pioneering 2010 study of 38 individuals identifying as Aboriginal from western NSW, using these techniques, found estimates of indigenous ancestry ranging from 20 to 100 per cent, with a modal value of around 70 per cent.

The question arises as to how much ancestry is necessary to be considered ‘Aboriginal’ for legal purposes – should it be one per cent, five per cent, ten per cent, or more? Someone with one Aboriginal great-great-grandparent has 6.25 per cent ancestry, so five per cent is hardly an onerous burden. If there are economic benefits to be shared among Aboriginal people, is it fair that somebody with one per cent ancestry should get the same as someone with 100 per cent? Thinking of it from the inside out, why is it that the one per cent of the former person’s genome should be privileged at the expense of the 99 per cent of her genome that is not indigenous?

To be clear, we are not suggesting compulsory genetic testing for people who claim to be Aboriginal. Need, not race, should be the basis of policy. However, because performative association is an insufficient basis for claiming Aboriginality, it would be helpful if claimants for economic benefits could strengthen their case by presenting objective DNA evidence rather than appealing to the vagaries of the last two Mabo criteria.