A prominent Aboriginal community leader has called out Northern beaches resident Neil Evers for self-identifying as Indigenous and demanded he stop performing Welcome to Country ceremonies.
Mr Evers has performed numerous Welcome to Country ceremonies around the northern beaches in the last decade since discovering he had distant Aboriginal heritage.
In May, he performed the ceremony ahead of the Manly Sea Eagles Indigenous Round match at Brookvale Oval.
Most recently, on Monday evening, he told a crowd at a “Meet the Candidates” congregation in Narrabeen he was a “Guringai man from the Warandigi Garigal Clan”.
Challenging this claim was Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council (MLALC) CEO Nathan Moran who told the Daily Telegraph the moment Mr Evers “opened his mouth” he began talking “absolute goona”, “our word for bulls**t”.
Previously, Mr Evers said his grandmother was “definitely Aboriginal”, and quipped that his family had “all just thought she had a good sun tan”.
The masthead reached out to Mr Evers and learned he discovered his heritage in his late 60s after he read a “history book about Bob Waterer and King Bungaree”.
SkyNews.com.au found the book which details the moment Mr Waterer found at the back of his wardrobe a leather pouch with birth, death and marriage certificates which “put beyond doubt that our heritage went back to the Broken Bay Aboriginal clan led by the famous Bungaree”.
Mr Evers said he had received a “certificate roughly 10 years ago from the Guringai Tribal Aboriginal Corporation” which had the same effect on him as Mr Waterer.
“I am regularly asked to do the Welcome to Country at local events. Sometimes I’m paid. Sometimes I volunteer,” he said.
He told the Daily Telegraph the certificate evidence of his background was “all the proof I need”.
Mr Moran slammed Mr Evers’ claim and said Indigenous certificates from “private companies are not real”.
The MLALC CEO said his organisation was the legislated body overseeing all Aboriginal people in his district, including the northern beaches under the Land Rights Act.
“There are laws for Aboriginality and how you identify as Aboriginal. In NSW we have the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. At the Commonwealth you have the Native Title Act. They both use a three-part definition … which is about verifying and is meant to avoid the self-identity issue,” Mr Moran said.
It was revealed by the Telegraph Mr Evers had applied in 2011 for MLALC membership, but was knocked back.
A spokesperson for the Guringai Tribal Aboriginal Corporation, who provided Mr Evers with his certificate, said he had been a member of the corporation for “many many years” and had sat as a director.
“He’s a very respected member of our mob. We were most definitely satisfied with his Aboriginality” the Guringai Tribal Aboriginal Corporation spokesperson said.
The Australian government outlined the legal definitions of Aboriginality as a “three pronged” process.
First a person must be an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, they must identify as such, and must be “accepted as such” by the community.
The National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) said this approach only applied to determining eligibility for government services.
The organisation said it did not have data on false claims of people identifying as Aboriginal.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics showed between 2016 and 2021 the number of people who identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander had jumped by 25.2 per cent.
More than 76 per cent of this number were people in the 0-19 year age cohort.
Just over 43 per cent of the increase was due to demographic factors, such as births, deaths and migration.
