Protector of Aborigines

George Austustus Robinson (1791–1866), one of the most famous Chief Protectors

Edward John Eyre, a well-known Australian explorer, was also the protector of the Aborigines

The Protectors of Aborigines were established on the proposal of the Select Committee of the British House of Commons and the Select Committee of the House of Commons for Aborigines , and on January 31, 1838, Lord Glenelg , Secretary of War and Colonial Affairs, sent an authorization to Governor George Gipps . The Protectors were supposed to protect the rights of the Aborigines, protect their interests and they were endowed with far-reaching rights.

selection

The Protectors of Aborigines were selected and had to learn or master the Aboriginal language. The Protectorate of Port Phillip was transferred to George Augustus Robinson as Chief Protector and to other full-time Protectors. For Victoria , for example, Robinson has been appointed chief protector with four assistant protectors, including William Thomas.

tasks

The Protector's task was to respect the rights of the Aborigines, to eliminate grievances and to ward off violence against them. In some states in Australia this task turned into a "social control" over the Aborigines. By law, a protector was the guardian of all Aborigines and determined their whereabouts, pending the decision on where to work, whom and whether they were allowed to marry. A protector could spend Aboriginal children against the will of their families in nursing homes, where they were brought up conservatively and were to be Christianized under the control of mostly church Aboriginal mission stations . The aim of this measure was the alienation of the children from their families and their Aboriginal traditions in order to better integrate them into society, where they ultimately had to work disenfranchised as servants and farm helpers, for the most part without pay. This development led to generations of Aborigines who were robbed of their origins and roots and went down in history as the Stolen Generation .

Some of the protectors were idealists who hoped that they could assert interests for the Aborigines. They soon gave up, such as Herbert Basedow, who abdicated as Protector after 45 days.

Other extreme cases were Auber Octavius ​​Neville and Cecil Cook, who promoted the policy of forced relocation, surveillance, discipline and punishment of the Aborigines. They pursued a racist idea of eugenics , which resulted in the fact that by mixing the natives with “white blood”, in particular by marrying mixed-race women with whites, the Aborigines can merge into the white race.

The position of the Protectors of Aborigines was not filled until the 1970s.

Protectors of Aborigines

Protectors of Aborigines in Australia were:

• Victoria ( Port Phillip , 1839 to 1849)
  • George Augustus Robinson
  • Charles Sievwright , ( Assistant Protector ) 1839 to 1842
  • William Thomas , ( Assistant Protector ) 1839 to 1849
  • Edward Stone Parker , ( Assistant Protector ) Loddon and Northwest District, 1839-1849
• Victoria
  • William Thomas, Guardian of Aborigines in the lands of Bourke , Mornington, and Evelyn
• South Australia
  • Matthew Moorhouse , before 1837
  • William Wyatt , 1837 to 1839
  • Daisy Bates (Exception: She received government funding for anthropological studies of the Aborigines)
  • Edward John Eyre
• Northern Territory (as part of South Australia until 1911)
  • Herbert Basedow , 1911 (45 days)
  • Walter Baldwin Spencer
  • Francis James Gillen , from 1892
  • William Edward Harney , 1940 to 1947
  • Xavier Herbert
  • Cecil Cook
• Queensland
  • William Geoffrey Cahill , 1905 to 1915
  • Walter Edmund Roth , 1904 to 1906,
  • Archibald Meston , 1898 to 1903
• Northern Territory
  • Walter Edmund Roth, 1898 to 1904
• Western Australia
  • AO Neville

Web links

• Index of the Chief Protectors of Aborigines (Western Australia), Files: 1898 - 1908 (PDF, 18 kB)
• 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 catalog "VPRS 2895 Chief Protector of Aborigines: Outward Letter Book 1848–1850 ... VPRS 4399 Duplicate Annual Reports for the Chief Protector of Aborigines 1845– ..."

Individual evidence

1. ^ Aplin, Graeme, SG Foster and Michael McKernan (eds) (Eds.): Australians: Events and Places . Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987, ISBN 0-949288-13-6 , pp. 47-8.
2. ^ Report by Dr. Cecil Cook ( Memento of the original from August 19, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
3. ↑ Dr. Cook was the Chief Protector of Aborigines during Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda's trial. He was the first Aboriginal to be heard by the High Court of Australia ( Memento of the original from February 6, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( National Archives of Australia )