The State as Father: 1910–1960

Abstract

As we have seen, Aboriginal people were omitted from the concept of the new Australian nation. Denied citizenship until 1948 and excluded from the census and voting for federal elections until 1968, the commonwealth could not legislate on their behalf. Not all Aborigines had come within the power of the colonisers, though; in remote regions, their land and communities were still their own and frontier warfare was not yet over. Class, sex, race and ethnicity were branded as divisive in the new nation, but colonialism located Australia's Indigenous people not only in a special position of oppression but also one of danger to the national interest. To acknowledge the separate interests or d1fferent history of the Aboriginal people would reveal the extent to which Australia's white settlement was premised on colonial takeover and domination.