For Their Own Good - Aborigines and Government in the South West of Western Australia 1900-1940

During the period from 1900 to 1936 Aborigines in the south west of Western Australia experienced profound changes in their way of life and their status in the wider community. At the turn of the century most were economically independent; living in the bush, on station land, or their own small farming blocks they found some degree of acceptance. By the early 1930s however they had been reduced to the status of second-class citizens subject to bursts of overt racism. This book examines the interconnected factors contributing to a bureaucratic process of pauperisation, institutionalisation and exclusion from the wider community with its associated effects on the Aborigines' status and their way of life.