However, once politicians realized that not all indigenous Australians wished to conform to their way of being, policies began to change. In 1967 a national referendum granted citizenship to Aboriginal Australians. Despite this referendum, Aboriginal Australians sought to establish their identity outside of European notions of Aboriginality. Analyzing how Indigenous Australians have come to define themselves, the author describes two modes of Aboriginal identity: local and pan-Aboriginal. According to European classifications, indigenous populations were seen as a homogeneous group. However, defining Indigenous Australians in this way diminishes the geographic, linguistic and cultural diversity that existed among these populations. According to Tonkinson, "despite many cultural similarities between groups, it is the differences that are most evident and significant from an Aboriginal perspective... [Aboriginal] people often invoke their uniqueness of language, traditional territory and kinship in asserting their [local] identity" (193). Pan-Aboriginality is the “construction of a common culture starting from a situation of cultural diversity” and this, according to Tonkinson, is “essential to building solidarity among a minority population and providing it with political strength in the Australian nation”. (215). By uniting in a common struggle, the Aboriginal people did so