Lawful conduct, Aboriginal protection and land in Victoria, 1859-1869

This chapter examines reports produced in Victoria by the Legislative Council’s Select Committee on the Aborigines and by the Central Board to Watch over the Interests of the Aborigines, in the decade leading up to the passing of the first Protection Act in 1869. We examine these sources not only for what they tell us about the emergence of settler colonial policies of protection, but for what they reveal about how both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people conducted themselves as lawholders. We seek to make visible new narratives that foreground Aboriginal people as holders of their own law and who encountered colonists who were living with—and ultimately sought to impose—a different law. The emergence of new discourses and structures of protection during this period can thus be seen as significant for identifying and assessing the nature of the relation between colonial law and Aboriginal law, rather than in terms of colonial law alone.