Protector of Aborigines

The role of Protectors of Aborigines resulted from a recommendation of the report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Aborigines (British Settlements). On 31 January 1838, Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies sent Governor Gipps the report.

The report recommended that Protectors of Aborigines should be engaged. They would be required to learn the Aboriginal language and their duties would be to watch over the rights of Aborigines, guard against encroachment on their property and to protect them from acts of cruelty, oppression and injustice. The Port Phillip Protectorate was established with George Augustus Robinson as chief protector and four full-time protectors.^[1]

While the role was nominally to protect Aborigines, particularly in remote areas, it has been suggested that the role included social control up to the point of controlling whom individuals were able to marry and where they lived and managing their financial affairs.

As well as Robinson, A. O. Neville and Edward John Eyre were notable Protectors of Aborigines.

Matthew Moorhouse was the first Protector of Aborigines in South Australia.

Aborigines Welfare Board in New South Wales was abolished in 1969. By then all states & territories had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.^[2]

Protectors of Aborigines

Protectors of Aborigines around Australia included:

• Victoria (Port Phillip Protectorate, 1839–1849)
  • George Augustus Robinson
  • William Thomas, (Assistant Protector) 1839-1849
  • Edward Stone Parker, (Assistant Protector) Loddon and Northwest District, 1839–1849
• Victoria
  • William Thomas, Guardian of Aborigines in the counties of Bourke, Mornington and Evelyn
• South Australia
  • Matthew Moorhouse
  • William Wyatt, 1837-
  • Daisy Bates
  • Edward John Eyre
• Northern Territory (part of South Australia until 1911)
  • Walter Baldwin Spencer
  • Francis James Gillen, 1892-
  • William Edward Harney, 1940 to 1947
  • Xavier Herbert
  • Cecil Cook^[3][4][5]
• Queensland
  • Walter Roth, 1898–1904,
  • Archibald Meston, 1898 to 1903
  • Patrick Killoran, 1963 to 1986
• Western Australia
  • A. O. Neville, see also the Moseley Royal Commission

References

1. ^ Aplin, Graeme, S.G. Foster and Michael McKernan (eds), ed (1987). Australians:Events and Places. Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates. pp. 47–8. ISBN 0-949288-13-6. 
2. ^ http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/aboriginal-history-timeline-early-20th.html
3. ^ Reports on actions of Dr Cecil Cook.
4. ^ Dr Cook was the Chief Protector of Aborigines during the trial and appeal of Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda. The first Aboriginal Australian whose case was heard in the High Court (at the National Archives of Australia)
5. ^ Hossain, Samia. “Norman Haire and Cecil Cook on Procedures of Sterilisation in the Inter-War Period.” In Historicising Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity, edited by Leigh Boucher, Jane Carey, and Katherine Ellinghaus, 454-63. Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2007.

External links

• An Index to the Chief Protector of Aborigines (Western Australia) Files 1898 - 1908 [PDF])
• Black Robinson: Protector of Aborigines. Vivienne Rae-Ellis. A controversial study of George ('Black') Robinson, first Chief Protector of Aborigines in Australia Melbourne University Press
• George Augustus Robinson, was a NSW Chief Protector of Aborigines in the early 1800s, George Augustus Robinson
• NSW State Library Protector of Aborigines Heritage Collection - the journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson (1791-1866)
• Public Record Office Victoria online catalogue "VPRS 2895 Chief Protector of Aborigines: Outward Letter Book 1848–1850 ... VPRS 4399 Duplicate Annual Reports for the Chief Protector of Aborigines 1845– ..."