ABSTRACT
The protection of Aboriginal peoples was a key aspect of the search for humane policies in Australia and New Zealand, as it was elsewhere. Like conciliation, the policy of Protection was consistent with the social formations of empire during the period. But it, too, was a failure and morphed from a policy designed to protect indigenes from the settler onslaught into an instrument of social and cultural control. This chapter addresses that trajectory while also noting the lasting legacies that the original aims of protection embedded in Indigenous peoples’ history.
