ines from the federal vote, the law, social service benefits and post office employment. Aboriginal affairs mostly remained an issue of the individual states rather than a federal one, and federal policy towards them didnt outline their rights (if any). Federation (January 1st 1901) was hoped to bring with it a better deal for Aborigines, but if anything it only cemented the segregation and inequality. The policies of the Federal government in its first decade of rule outlined that Aboriginal culture was to be discouraged and white values and practises encouraged. A section of the White Australia Policy (1901) contained policy aimed to assimilate the remnants [Chinese, West Indian, and African, as well as Aboriginal Australians] into white society. Assimilation was part of a policy of protectionism, in which the aboriginal people were to be protected from their own culture and made useful citizens in white society. Dominant white society typically assumed that the best policy for Aborigines was to adopt white ways. The policy of assimilation was strengthened and extended in the Aborigines Protection Act of 1909. The Act outlined a policy in which aboriginality was to be bred out of the half-castes and encouraged their absorption into white culture. The full bloods were thus seen to have no future and it became policy to restrict them totally to reserves. It was this act that gave the board [APB], with the approval of a magistrate, the power to remove indigenous children [from their homes] and apprentice them to white upper-class Australians. This led to the travesty now referred to as the stolen generation. Though most people remained on the reserves in pitiful conditions, the assimilation policy granted a number of exemptions. By 1910, assimilation had replaced the government policy of smoothing the dying pillow for the half-caste aboriginal people, though political policy in regards to full bloods greatly still followed the forme...
