ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the policies for the protective governance of Aboriginal people pursued by Governor John Hutt in Western Australia, which aimed to educate and assimilate Aboriginal people as employed members of a developing colonial state. This occurred within the context of Hutt’s broader plans for systematic colonisation, which relied on concentrated agricultural settlement and the resourcing of colonial administration (including protective governance) from sales of land. Hutt had not contemplated, however, the fierce settler resistance and insatiable quest for remote pastoral land that would force him to modify the humanitarian objectives of the British government.
