Colonial protection and the intimacies of Indigenous governance

Abstract

Recent scholarship on colonial Protectors of Aborigines has examined the unclear line they walked between advocating for Indigenous rights and advancing the project of colonial state-building. Their task to bring Indigenous people within the fold of Christian civilisation and within the reach of settler law involved more than an attempt to implement colonial policy, however. It also brought Protectors into daily personal contact with Indigenous people in multiple settings. With reference to the overlooked colonial protectorate in South Australia, where the position of Protector of Aborigines was guaranteed as a condition of the colony’s foundation in 1836, this article draws out some of the ‘strategic intimacies’ that underpinned protection as an early mode of colonial governance. By examining more closely the varied ways in which Protectors and Indigenous people intersected in first-contact settings, it explores the fluid configurations of power in a colonial social order that was only just evolving.