Aboriginal Welfare Board

The Aboriginal Welfare Board was the successor organization of the Aboriginal Protection Board , which could be replaced for the first time in 1940 by political organizations of the Aborigines .

The Aboriginal Protection Boards existed in different organizational forms in all federal states of Australia . They had far-reaching rights over the life, whereabouts, work and marriage and other areas of life of the Aborigines and thus ultimately had control over the entire life of the Aborigines. They could take half-casts (mixed race of whites and blacks) or children of the Aborigines away from their parents and either place them in homes, Aboriginal mission stations or with whites. This injustice went down in Australian history with the concept of the stolen generation . These boards also had the function of economic pressure on the Aborigines to have a job and thus also to exercise this on other dependent employees.

The Aboriginal Progressive Association achieved the goal of abolishing the Aboriginal Protection Board in New South Wales in 1944. This new Aboriginal Welfare Board included Aboriginal members for the first time, such as Pearl Gibbs . Gibbs realized that achieving this goal required the support of whites, so whites were also active in the organization. The newly established Aboriginal Welfare Board achieved minor changes to the social welfare law in the interests of the Aborigines and there were also approaches to improve the Aboriginal education. However, the Second World War brought the relevant initiatives to a standstill.

Web links

indigenousrights.net.au Information on indigenousrights.net.au ( Memento from April 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

↑ An Act to Make Provision for the Better Protection and Care of the Aboriginal and Half-Caste Inhabitants of the Colony, and to make more Effectual Provision for Restricting the Sale and Distribution of Opium (Queensland Act No. 17 of 1897). National Archives of Australia, archived from the original on June 21, 2009 ; Retrieved on April 7, 2019 (English): “In effect, such reserves operated initially to separate unproductive, ill and 'problematic' Aboriginal people from those working efficiently in European industries - pastoral, agricultural, marine and domestic. As time passed, they also became labor reservoirs from which Aboriginal contract workers could be drafted to white rural and urban employers. "

[1] An Act to Make Provision for the Better Protection and Care of the Aboriginal and Half-Caste Inhabitants of the Colony, and to make more Effectual Provision for Restricting the Sale and Distribution of Opium (Queensland Act No. 17 of 1897). National Archives of Australia, archived from the original on June 21, 2009 ; Retrieved on April 7, 2019 (English): “In effect, such reserves operated initially to separate unproductive, ill and 'problematic' Aboriginal people from those working efficiently in European industries - pastoral, agricultural, marine and domestic. As time passed, they also became labor reservoirs from which Aboriginal contract workers could be drafted to white rural and urban employers. "