In Australia, it's 'Aboriginal' with a capital 'A': Aboriginality, politics and identity

Abstract

Sometime in the 1960s, for both ethical and political reasons, the term 'Aboriginal' and 'Aboriginal' began to be written with a capital 'A', thus becoming an ethnonym; it applied to the descendants of the first inhabitants of the Australian continent, some 500 groups speaking different languages and designated - even now - by different names. Today, Aboriginal groups have not only different languages and cultural backgrounds, but different histories as well - reserves, separation of children from parents, mixed descent - all of which has put more or less distance between them and their heritage. And yet many still claim that there is such a thing as an 'Aboriginality' which unites everyone under the same identity, even if not everyone can agree on its definition.