Between 1883 and 1967 the lives of Aboriginal people in New South Wales (NSW) were in the hands of the NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board.
The impact of the Board's systematic control over Aboriginal communities through policies of segregation, assimilation, child removal and wage withholding would endure for decades, and the negative results of those government directives are still being seen today. To date, however, no substantive history of the NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board exists. This project aims to provide such a history, based on extensive archival and oral history research. Holding critical importance to NSW Aboriginal communities, the project expects to encourage the development of Indigenous historians in the process.
The project has delivered several important outcomes including findings used in ANU's Indigenous Studies major. Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation included findings in its Stole Generation Mobile Education to assist understanding the impacts of intergenerational trauma and support healing. Dr Lorina Barker's (UNE) 'Looking Through Windows' multimedia project of the removal, dispossession and 'protection' of Aboriginal people played to audiences in Armidale, Brewarrina, Redfern, and Newcastle. The project helped the creation of a 'List of Aboriginal reserves in NSW' at the State Library. AIATSIS and the University of Newcastle are developing an interactive map that allows the reserves dataset to be publicly available.