Protector of Aborigines

The Australian colonies and in the nineteenth century created offices involved in dealing with indigenous people in the jurisdictions.

The role of Protector of Aborigines was first established in South Australia in 1836. The role became established in other parts of Australia pursuant to a recommendation contained in the Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes, (British settlements.) of the UK's Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes. On 31 January 1838, Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies sent Governor Gipps of NSW the report. The report recommended that protectors of Aborigines should be engaged. They would be required to learn the Aboriginal language and their duties would be to watch over the rights of Indigenous Australians (mostly mainland Aboriginal Australians, but also Torres Strait Islander people), guard against encroachment on their property and to protect them from acts of cruelty, oppression and injustice.

In many colonial, state, territory and similar jurisdictions a chief protector was appointed.

Matthew Moorhouse became the first non-interim Protector of Aborigines in South Australia in 1839. In 1841 he led volunteers who committed the Rufus River massacre, which slaughtered 30 to 40 Aboriginal people.^[1] From the 1890s, the role often included social control up to the point of controlling whom individuals were able to marry and where they lived and managing their financial affairs, through legislation like the Half-Caste Act.^{[citation needed]}

A. O. Neville was a notable Chief Protector of Aborigines and later Commissioner of Native Affairs in Western Australia, and was in office from 1915 to 1940. By 1969 all states and territories had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of protection.^{[citation needed]}