ARC Discovery Project funding success

Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Professor John Maynard and Associate Professor Victoria Haskins have been awarded more than $610,000 in ARC Discovery Project funding commencing in 2015 for their research project The NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board 1883-1969: A History.

About the project

Between 1883 and 1967 the lives of Aboriginal people in New South Wales (NSW) were in the hands of the NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board. The impact of the Board's systematic control over Aboriginal communities through policies of segregation, as similation, child removal and wage withholding would endure for decades, and the negative results of those government directives are still being seen today. To date, however, no substantive history of the NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board exists. This project aims to provide such a history, based on extensive archival and oral history research. Holding critical importance to NSW Aboriginal communities, the project expects to encourage the development of Indigenous historians in the process.

Find out more

Fred Maynard and his sister Emma at the Rocks  1927

Aboriginal activist leader Fred Maynard with his sister Emma, at Sydney in
the Rocks in 1927. At that time Fred Maynard was leading a campaign to abolish
the NSW Aborigines Protection Board and his struggle was the inspiration for Professor John Maynard's research.