The Aborigines Protection Board was established to manage reserves and the welfare of the estimated 9000 Aboriginal people living in New South Wales in the 1880s. It was part of the Department of Police and was chaired by the Commissioner of Police. It met weekly in Phillip Street in Sydney.
The Board operated without legislative authority until 1909 and the passage of the Aborigines Protection Act. This act and subsequent legislation restricted the capacity of Aboriginal people to choose where they lived, enjoy education at the same standard offered to the rest of the community, set their own employment contracts, drink alcohol or receive family endowment in cash.
Growing increasingly ambitious, the Board began to seek greater control over the lives of Indigenous people. It achieved this with the 1909 Act, which provided for all reserves and stations and all buildings to be vested in the Board.
The Board had the power to: move Aboriginal people out of towns; set up managers, local committees and local guardians (police) for the reserves; control reserves; prevent liquor being sold to Aboriginals; and to stop whites from associating with Aboriginals or entering the reserves. It even retained ownership of the blankets it distributed.
The Board had sought the power to remove children, but the 1909 Act only gave it the same powers that applied to neglected white children. The 1915 amendments gave it the power to remove any child at any time and for any reason (National Museum of Australia).
William ‘Bill’ Ferguson of the Aboriginal Progressive Association criticised the Board in 1939. He wrote:
Let the Government free us of our bondage (the Aboriginal Protection Board) and that will relieve the Government of a very heavy and useless expense. The greater part of the £55,000 allowed yearly for the upkeep of aborigines is mainly used in the upkeep of the A.P. Board by way of salaries to members of the Board, manager’s salaries, and the upkeep of managers’ wives and families, also a large office staff and Inspectors; and what is left is used to feed and clothe the aborigines. It is no wonder the Board refuses to allow the mothers to handle their child endowment, because there is revenue in the endowment for the Board (The Richmond River Herald and Northern Districts Advertiser, 26 May 1939).
The Aborigines Protection Board was replaced by the Aborigines Welfare Board in 1940. Its purpose was assimilation, rather than protection, however the new organisation carried on many of the previous policies towards Aboriginal children and families.
From
1883
To
1940
Alternative Names
Protection Board
Board for the Protection of Aborigines
