Federation as a turning point in Australian history

Abstract

Popular commemoration of Federation in the centenary year was marked by positive evaluation of the emergence of Australia as a nation state. The historical narratives upon which speakers and writers drew reiterated representations of events that disguised colonial denial of the human and civil rights of Aborigines. Both formally in the Constitution and in subsequent legislation establishing political rights, and administratively in the management of Indigenous concerns, settler governments removed existing rights and simultaneously applied new controls on Aborigines' entitlements to compensation for lost land and to personal autonomy. A close look at some Victorian Aborigines' assertion of r..