Protection Regimes
Date
2022
Authors
Nettelbeck, A.
Editors
Cane, P.
Ford, L.
McMillan, M.
Ford, L.
McMillan, M.
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Book chapter
Citation
Cambridge Legal History of Australia, 2022 / Cane, P., Ford, L., McMillan, M. (ed./s), Ch.20, pp.482-501
Statement of Responsibility
Amanda Nettlebeck
Conference Name
Abstract
The term ‘protection’ in Australia is closely associated with the practices and institutions of assimilation imposed upon Indigenous people through much of the twentieth century. These practices and institutions were backed by laws that granted state governments wide-ranging powers of control over Indigenous lives, purportedly for their own good. The multi-generational impacts of assimilative policies continue to resonate for Indigenous communities today. Yet apart from the legal regime of assimilation that defined Indigenous policy through the mid-twentieth century, protection has a longer and more complex history in Australia, as it does globally. This chapter traces Australia’s history of protection, from its nineteenth-century origins as a program designed to build Indigenous people’s status as British subjects, to its twentieth-century expressions as a legally-empowered system of state guardianship. While the history of protection is one of legal authority, it is also a history of Indigenous political action.
School/Discipline
Dissertation Note
Provenance
Description
Access Status
Rights
© 2022 Cambridge University Press