AustLit

'No one was  surprised when, in 1977, the Western Australian Government put a blanket ban on its recently decommissioned Aboriginal archive and even threatened legal action against researchers. The archive was a ticking time bomb: the dutifully documented words in its files exposed for the first time the extent of despotic powers wielded by state governments over Aboriginal people during the twentieth century. Read in the present context they show how racism, denial of rights, segregation, incarceration and breaking up of families structured and institutionalised the Aboriginal problems of today. These words from the past speak directly to the Uluru Statement: they ‘tell plainly the structural nature of our problem…the torment of our powerlessness’.' (Introduction)