What were Aboriginal Cooperation Act intentions?

Aboriginal Cooperation Act intentions in Australia have varied across multiple twentieth-century state and federal Acts that addressed Aboriginal protection, assimilation, welfare, and (from the 1970s onwards) self-determination. The various Acts have aimed at different and often incompatible goals reflecting the policy frameworks of their times.

Early protection Acts operated from the 1869 to the early twentieth century. The Aborigines Protection Act 1869 (Vic) was Australia's first major state Aboriginal Act, establishing the Board for the Protection of Aborigines and giving it extensive powers to control Aboriginal lives. The Aborigines Protection Act 1886 (Vic) and equivalent state Acts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries imposed increasing controls on Aboriginal employment, marriage, wages, movement, and child-rearing. The Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW), the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918 (NT), the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld), and the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA) gave Protectors of Aborigines broad power over Aboriginal lives. The stated intentions were protective but the actual effect was extensive control and dispossession.

Assimilation Acts followed from 1937 to about 1969. Adopted at the 1937 Aboriginal Welfare Conference and reformulated at the 1951 Native Welfare Conference, the assimilation approach aimed at the complete absorption of Aboriginal people into white Australian society. Various state and territory Aborigines Acts of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s (the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders' Affairs Act 1965 in Qld, the Native Administration Act 1936 to 1953 in WA, and others) operated under this framework. The Stolen Generations removal practices continued under these Acts.

Self-determination Acts from the 1970s onwards marked a sharp shift. The Whitlam government's establishment of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in December 1972 and the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (passed under Fraser) represented the new framework. The Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act 1976, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Act 1989 (the ATSIC framework, abolished in 2005), and various state-based Aboriginal land council Acts established Aboriginal-controlled structures. The Native Title Act 1993 codified the Mabo decision. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 protected sacred sites. The Aboriginal Corporations Act 2006 modernised the legal framework for Aboriginal organisations. The current Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations (the national body that co-negotiated the 2020 National Agreement on Closing the Gap with Australian governments) is the contemporary peak body for Indigenous-controlled organisations.