This winner of the Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues is a beautifully and languidly written exploration of a little understood aspect of Australian history, and a personal discovery of the men who were the Northern Territory's protectors of Aboriginal welfare. It deals with the moral and ethical issues of 'good intentions', guilt, racism and their consequences on the lives of Aboriginal people.
While Stephen Gray uncovers this history and reveals the personalities of the Protectors, the questions he asks and the moral dilemmas he raises apply as readily to the complexities of black/white relations today as they did at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is an intelligent and challenging book about how we judge the past and an inquiry into what exactly the Australian nation said sorry for in 2008.
