ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses aspects of the lived history of Koori people in New South Wales as an example of the policies of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection and Welfare Boards, which affected Koori people from 1883 to 1969, and political events into the 1970s. The history of ‘special treatment’ for Koori people started at the dawn of British invasion in 1770. From the Aborigines Protection Board’s inception in 1883 until it was abolished and replaced by the Aborigines Welfare Board in 1940, policies of special treatment were based primarily on changing the overall structure of Koori lifestyles to suit the ideals the Board believed Kooris could attain. After decades of being treated as sub-human by the colonists and settlers, suffering under inferior government policies of ‘special treatment’ and ignorant bureaucrats, Kooris began to assert themselves politically, to demand equality in the basic services which the wider Australian community took for granted.
