'Ros Kidd uses official correspondence to reveal the extraordinary extent of government controls over Aboriginal wages, savings, endowments and pensions in twentieth century Queensland. In a disturbing indictment of the government’s $4000 reparations offer, Kidd unpicks official dealings on the huge trust funds compiled from private income and community endeavours, showing how governments used these finances to their advantage, while families and communities struggled in poverty.'
'Casting the evidence in terms of national and international litigation, particularly cases relating to government accountability for Indigenous interests, Kidd makes a powerful case that the Queensland government should be held to the same standards of accountability and redress as any major financial institution. Trustees on trial is a timely warning for all other Australian jurisdictions to consider their liability for Aboriginal money taken in trust.' (Source: Publisher's website)
'This book has one story to tell, but it is an important story about Aboriginal people in the state of Queensland from 1897 until the 1990s.1The story Kidd documents is that the trustees who had a fiduciary duty to protect and preserve the interests of their Aboriginal changes did not in fact do their duty very satisfactorily, but diverted wage money and other Aboriginal resources to projects of their choosing or in some cases simply pocketed it for themselves. For non-Australians and for some younger Australians it is important to remember that while all Aboriginal persons were regarded in the popular mind as non-citizens and as wards of the state, their status in the six states before Federation in 1901 was more complex. However, they were under severe restraints, of one sort or another, in all six jurisdictions. They lived in a state of ‘coerced dependency’ as Kidd puts it (p.72). In Queensland, Aboriginal persons were required to live where they were assigned, could not travel without permission (even if they did happen to have the money to do so), had to work where they were sent and had no rights to negotiate working conditions. In some cases they were required to work up to 32 hours a week without pay: ‘…year after year more and more men, women and children were contracted involuntarily to locations where there was no protection against labour exploitation, sexual or physical assault’ (p.63).' (Introduction)
'This book has one story to tell, but it is an important story about Aboriginal people in the state of Queensland from 1897 until the 1990s.1The story Kidd documents is that the trustees who had a fiduciary duty to protect and preserve the interests of their Aboriginal changes did not in fact do their duty very satisfactorily, but diverted wage money and other Aboriginal resources to projects of their choosing or in some cases simply pocketed it for themselves. For non-Australians and for some younger Australians it is important to remember that while all Aboriginal persons were regarded in the popular mind as non-citizens and as wards of the state, their status in the six states before Federation in 1901 was more complex. However, they were under severe restraints, of one sort or another, in all six jurisdictions. They lived in a state of ‘coerced dependency’ as Kidd puts it (p.72). In Queensland, Aboriginal persons were required to live where they were assigned, could not travel without permission (even if they did happen to have the money to do so), had to work where they were sent and had no rights to negotiate working conditions. In some cases they were required to work up to 32 hours a week without pay: ‘…year after year more and more men, women and children were contracted involuntarily to locations where there was no protection against labour exploitation, sexual or physical assault’ (p.63).' (Introduction)
