Half-Caste Act was the common name given to Acts of Parliament passed in Victoria (Aboriginal Protection Act 1886) and Western Australia (Aborigines Protection Act 1886) in 1886.[1] They became the model for legislation to control Aboriginal people throughout Australia - Queensland's Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897,[2] NSW/ACT's Aboriginal Protection Act 1909, the Northern Territory Aboriginals Act 1910, South Australia's Aborigines Act 1911, and Tasmania's Cape Barren Island Reserve Act 1912.
The various related Acts allowed the seizure of "half-caste" children (i.e., mixed race children[3]) and their forcible removal from their parents. This was theoretically to provide them with better homes than those afforded by typical Aboriginal people, where they could grow up to work as domestic servants, and also for social engineering.[4][5][6] "Half-caste" people were distinguished from "full-blood" Aboriginal people.[7]
The removed children are now known as the Stolen Generations.
These Acts were a major impetus for a 1967 referendum question. Some of the controls first created by the Acts remained in place until the early 1970s.
- ^ "Glossary". abc.net.au. Retrieved 1 September 2009.
- ^ Kenneth Liberman. The Decline of the Kuwarra People of Australia's Western Desert: A Case Study of Legally Secured Domination. Ethnohistory, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Spring, 1980), pp. 119-133. See page 121 in particular.
- ^ Memidex/WordNet
- ^ "Aboriginal timeline (1900 - 1969)". Creative Spirits NGO. Archived from the original on 14 August 2012. Retrieved 23 June 2019.
- ^ Robert van Krieken (June 1999). "The barbarism of civilization: cultural genocide and the 'stolen generations'". The British Journal of Sociology. 50 (2): 297–315. doi:10.1080/000713199358752. PMID 15260027.
- ^ John Hutnyk (2005). "Hybridity" (PDF). Ethnic and Racial Studies. 28 (1): 79–102. doi:10.1080/0141987042000280021. S2CID 217537998.
- ^ "A White Australia". Australians Together. Retrieved 12 June 2020.