Black Glass: Western Australian Courts of Native Affairs 1936-54

Between 1936 and 1954, the Western Australian government operated Courts of Native Affairs that heard murder and manslaughter cases where defendant and victim were Aboriginal. These cases—which, for every other citizen, had the status of Supreme Court trials—were reduced to summary hearings that were largely conducted by amateurs. This investigation explores these little-known courts, along with the silence in which they were buried, and the strategic silences exercised by their Aboriginal subjects. Aboriginal people volunteered multiple and arguably deliberately obfuscating versions of events, establishing false tracks and alternative scenarios of some complexity. Some of these narratives were advanced, dropped, adopted again, and repackaged, and this study looks at them all. pp. 366 #0516