When the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission tabled Bringing them home, its report into the separation of indigenous children from their families, it was criticised for failing to consider Indigenous child welfare within the context of contemporary standards. Non-Indigenous people who had experienced out-of-home care also questioned why their stories were not recognised. This thesis addresses those concerns, examining the origins and history of the welfare systems of NSW and Tasmania between 1880 and 1940. Tasmania, which had no specific policies on race or Indigenous children, provides fruitful ground for comparison with NSW, which had separate welfare systems for children defined as Indigenous and non-Indigenous. This thesis draws on the records of these systems to examine the gaps between ideology and policy and practice. The development of welfare systems was uneven, but there are clear trends. In the years 1880 to 1940 non-Indigenous welfare systems placed their faith in boarding-out (fostering) as the most humane method of caring for neglected and destitute children, although institutions and juvenile apprenticeship were never supplanted by fostering. Concepts of child welfare shifted from charity to welfare; that is, from simple removal to social interventions that would assist children's reform. These included education, and techniques to enlist the support of the child's family in its reform. The numbers of non-Indigenous children taken into care were reduced by economic and environmental measures, such as payments to single mothers. The NSW Aborigines Protection Board dismissed boarding-out as an option for Indigenous children and applied older methods, of institutionalisation and apprenticeship, to children it removed from reserves. As non-Indigenous welfare systems in both states were refined, the Protection Board clung to its original methods. It focussed on older children, whilst allowing reserves to deteriorate, and reducing the rights of Aboriginal people. This cannot simply be explained by race, for Tasmania did not adopt the same response. This study shows that the policies of the Aborigines Protection Board were not consonant with wider standards in child welfare of the time. However, the common thread between Indigenous and non-Indigenous child removal was the longing of children and their families for each other.

Bibliography: p. 367-378. / x, 378 p. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / "This thesis is about the origins and original intentions of law; that which I call raw law. Law emanates from Kaldowinyeri, that is the beginning of time itself. Law first took form in song. In this thesis I argue that the law is naked like the land and its peoples, and is distinguished from that known law by the colonists, which is a layered system of rules and regulations, an imposing one which buries the essence and nature of law." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Law, 2000

When the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission tabled Bringing them home, its report into the separation of indigenous children from their families, it was criticised for failing to consider Indigenous child welfare within the context of contemporary standards. Non-Indigenous people who had experienced out-of-home care also questioned why their stories were not recognised. This thesis addresses those concerns, examining the origins and history of the welfare systems of NSW and Tasmania between 1880 and 1940. Tasmania, which had no specific policies on race or Indigenous children, provides fruitful ground for comparison with NSW, which had separate welfare systems for children defined as Indigenous and non-Indigenous. This thesis draws on the records of these systems to examine the gaps between ideology and policy and practice. The development of welfare systems was uneven, but there are clear trends. In the years 1880 to 1940 non-Indigenous welfare systems placed their faith in boarding-out (fostering) as the most humane method of caring for neglected and destitute children, although institutions and juvenile apprenticeship were never supplanted by fostering. Concepts of child welfare shifted from charity to welfare; that is, from simple removal to social interventions that would assist children's reform. These included education, and techniques to enlist the support of the child's family in its reform. The numbers of non-Indigenous children taken into care were reduced by economic and environmental measures, such as payments to single mothers. The NSW Aborigines Protection Board dismissed boarding-out as an option for Indigenous children and applied older methods, of institutionalisation and apprenticeship, to children it removed from reserves. As non-Indigenous welfare systems in both states were refined, the Protection Board clung to its original methods. It focussed on older children, whilst allowing reserves to deteriorate, and reducing the rights of Aboriginal people. This cannot simply be explained by race, for Tasmania did not adopt the same response. This study shows that the policies of the Aborigines Protection Board were not consonant with wider standards in child welfare of the time. However, the common thread between Indigenous and non-Indigenous child removal was the longing of children and their families for each other.

Thesis (PhD) -- Macquarie University, Division of Environmental and Life Sciences, Department of Human Geography, 2007. / "November 2006". Bibliography: p. 352-398.

Thesis (M.A.)--Flinders University, School of Education. / Typescript bound. Includes bibliographical references: (leaves 149-168) Also available online.

"September 2002." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 336-366) Argues that the Australian nation is the primary obstacle to the granting of self-determination to indigenous people because it is imagined and constituted as a monocultural entity, one that resists any divisions within the national space on the basis of culture or 'race'.

Australian historicity is built on the absence of the Aboriginal subjective experience. The Right to Dream explores the temporal consequence of the imposition of the homogenous Aborigine, a social and political construction that effectively annihilated the right to exist as individual bodies within the earth space and its consequence on the well being of Indigenous peoples upon whom it was imposed. The Right to Dream is especially an attempt to understand my own subjective experience as an Aborigine in the land now known as Australia, and process that would in the words of Dr. Aileen Moreton-Robinson, propel me from being the known to the knower. The assimilation of the Indigenous body by western language has had devastating affects on the body as well as the land, and it is in this context that this thesis explores the notion of destruction of Indigenous peoples, their cultures and physical, spiritual, and emotional well being as being synonymous to the consequent destruction of their lands, marked by the loss of Indigenous languages throughout the country now known as Australia. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis draws on the documentary historical record to examine the interactions between the indigenous Larrakia people and the white settlers in the colonial township of Darwin between the years 1869 and 1911. The colonial recognition of the Larrakia as the traditional owners of lands in the Darwin region and the historical question of their land rights is discussed in some detail. Rather than seeing interactions between the Larrakia and the colonisers as polarised into either accommodation or resistance, this thesis looks at various interactions to highlight the complexities of the encounter. One of the more complex of their interactions was the negotiation of what is best described as an abstruse alliance which benefited both the Larrakia and the colonisers in various ways. The colonisation of the Darwin region had a considerable impact on the Larrakia people's ability to live on their country as they had done prior to the invasion. This thesis seeks to understand the negotiations, compromises and decisions the Larrakia made to survive in their changing landscape. Another complexity that is highlighted in this thesis is the tension within the white settler population about how to deal with what was presented as the 'Aboriginal problem'. This thesis shows that the ideology of compensating Aboriginal people for having invaded their land and undermining their means of subsistence was understood and condoned by the colonisers. The distribution of government rations, the allocation of reserves and the ongoing recognition of the Larrakia's right to be within the township were all ways that some colonisers attempted to compensate Aborigines for invading their land. This thesis shows that while the Larrakia people were recognised as the prior occupants of Darwin and, as such, accorded a distinct status within the township in the whole period under study, the colonisers ultimately failed to give tangible expression to the Larrakia's land rights.

Karen Jennings (1993) and Peter Krausz (2003) in their works, written ten years apart, note the changing ways in which the academic world and the media have dealt with representations of Indigenous identity. It was hoped that the latter work would have been discussing the way in which things have already changed. The fact that it does not, initiates the questions addressed in this thesis: whether Australian cinema explores Indigenous issues in sufficient depth and with cultural resonance. Can a study of cinematic representations lead to a better understanding of Aboriginal identity? In representing Aboriginality on screen does the cinema present a representational complex for Indigenous Australia, which is constructed on their behalf by the cinema itself? In this thesis these questions are theoretically framed within a semiotic methodology, which is applied to the examination of the complexities of representation. This is done through an analysis of the connotations and stereotyping of Indigenous identity in filmic narratives; and the operation of narrative closure and myth making systems through historical time periods; and dualisms in the filmic narratives such as primitive/civilised, us/them, self/other; and the presence of Aboriginality as an absent signifier. The four films chosen for comparative analysis are Jedda, Night Cries, Walkabout and Rabbit Proof Fence. These films span a period of fifty years, which allows for an explication of the changes that have occurred over the passing of time in their visual representations of Aboriginal identity. Hence social and cultural filmic identity representations are juxtaposed with the historical and political discourses prevalent at the time of their production. Through such a detailed analysis of the four film texts, the dominant social discourses of Australia are analysed in relation to their operation as representational frameworks for Indigenous Australians.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / N/A