A different kind of subject: Aboriginal legal status and colonial law
in Western Australia, 1829-1861.
This thesis is an examination of the nature and application of the policy regarding the
legal status and rights of Aboriginal people in Western Australia from 1829 to 1861. It
describes the extent of the debates and the role of British law that arose after conflict
between Aboriginal people and settlers in the context of political and economic contests
between settlers and government on land issues. While the British government
continually maintained that the legal basis for annexation was settlement, by the mid
1830s Stirling regarded it as an invasion, but was neither prepared to accept that
Aboriginal people had to consent to the imposition of British law upon them, nor to
formally recognise their rights as the original owners of the land. Instead, Stirlings
government applied an archaic form of outlawry to Aboriginal people who resisted the
invasion. This was despite proposals for agreements in the 1830s.
During the early 1840s there was a temporary legal pluralism in Western Australia
where Indigenous laws were officially recognised. However, by the mid 1840s the
administration of British law in Western Australia was increasingly dictated by settler
interests and mounting settler-magistrate pressure to modify the legal position of
Aboriginal people which resulted in the development of colonial law to construct a
landless subject status with minimal rights based on their value as a useful labour force
for the pastoral economy. This separate legal status deliberately departed from
equality principles and corresponded with the diminished status of Indigenous laws
and the abandonment of legal pluralism in settled districts, during a period of rapid
pastoral expansion in the 1850s. This entrenched discriminatory practice in colonial law
would be the prelude to the protectionist and discriminatory legislation of the early
twentieth century which formalised inequality of legal status.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/221833 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Ahunter@echidna.id.au, Ann Patricia Hunter |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Ann Patricia Hunter |
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