The Way We Civilise

This groundbreaking study details how successive Queensland governments controlled the Aboriginal population in this State.  Based on years of research into government and church files and correspondence, Dr Ros Kidd offers new perspectives and understandings in this complex history covering over 150 years.  The prioritising of the voices of missionaries, bureaucrats and politicians, and the people whose lives they manipulated, brings an arresting immediacy to this disturbing saga, and its impact on Aboriginal lives to the present day. [REVIEWS]

Trustees on Trial

 In this startling book, Dr 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 of May 2002, Dr Kidd unpicks official dealings on the huge trust funds compiled from private income and community endeavours to show 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, Ros 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. [REVIEWS]

Black Lives, Government Lies

This brief work is a devastating rejoinder to cavalier claims made by senior federal politicians in 2000, that past removals of Aboriginal children and families was ‘essentially lawful and benign in intent’.  By bringing to light historical evidence on official files, Dr Kidd demolishes the mantle of ‘good intentions’ to uncover government complicity in the entrapment of men, women and children in pernicious conditions and crushingly truncated opportunities. [REVIEWS]

Hard Labour, Stolen Wages

Compiled as a scene-setter for the 2006 Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee of Inquiry into Stolen Wages Nationally, this timely investigation by Dr Ros Kidd demonstrates the same forensic thoroughness that characterises her ongoing revelations of Queensland government mismanagement of Aboriginal lives, work, wages, savings and Trust funds.  Working from research by historians in all Australian states and territories, Dr Kidd reveals a national pattern of exploitation of Aboriginal lives, labour and finances across Australia during the twentieth century. [REVIEWS]