Organisation Aborigines Protection Board (1890 - 1897)

Colony of Western Australia

From

1890

To

1897

Summary

The Aborigines Protection Board continued for the first few years of Western Australia's existence as a self-governing Colony. In fact, Aboriginal matters played an important role in achieving representative government. Battye, in his (1924) history of colonial Western Australia (p.397), reports that the existence and funding of an Aboriginal Protection Board was a requirement of the Constitution of the Colony of Western Australia. The British government was concerned that, without this provision, authorities in the colony would not put money aside to meet the needs of the Aboriginal people who were being displaced from their traditional lands and ways by the settlers.