ABSTRACT
Robert John Sholl’s 15 years as Government Resident at the new colonial settlement at Roebourne demonstrates the ambivalence of colonial governance which, while implicated in justifying colonialism, sought simultaneously to mitigate its impact on the region’s Aboriginal people. Exercising almost supreme local power, his broad protection policies were twofold: confining Aboriginal people on stations or in towns, and official punishment of those believed to threaten the progress of colonisation, which he justified as a measure to forestall unilateral settler action. In the pearling industry, Sholl failed to act to protect Aboriginal people from forced recruitment and brutal labour arrangements. A focus on a place far removed from the oversight of a central colonial government illustrates how the actual practice of protection distorted official intentions. Sholl’s tenure as Government Resident at a formative time in the colonial history of the Pilbara can therefore reveal aspects of protection that are beyond the scope of policy-focussed histories.
