Dictionary

wadjela en · ADJ

Etymology

Borrowed from Nyunga wadjela, itself from English white fella.

Meanings

1. (Australia, qualifier:Australian Aboriginal slang) Relating to white people.
   • Finally, the colonisers were attempting genocide, they wanted us all dead. If I identified with my wadjela ancestry at the expense of my Aboriginality, the colonisers win. 2021 November 7, Claire [G.] Coleman, “Not quite blak enough: ‘The people who think I am too white to be Aboriginal are all white’”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2021:

Forms

Relateds

blak

wadjela en · NOUN

Etymology

Borrowed from Nyunga wadjela, itself from English white fella.

Meanings

1. (Australia, qualifier:Australian Aboriginal slang) A white person.
   • It was the wadjelas that created the ‘one drop’ rule, that defined anybody with a single bla(c)k ancestor as black. […] ‘Traditional’ is such loaded language, enshrining a belief that we are stuck in the past rather than being one of the most adaptable cultures in history, that some of us are using ‘classical’ instead when referring to any part of Aboriginal culture that appears similar to what it is imagined we produced before wadjela came. 2021 November 7, Claire [G.] Coleman, “Not quite blak enough: ‘The people who think I am too white to be Aboriginal are all white’”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 03 Dec 2021:

Forms