Chapter 7: Slavery Without the Name – Aboriginal Forced Labour
The Word We Refuse to Use
Australia has long insisted, “We never had slavery.” This is repeated in schoolbooks, politics, and even public debate. Yet when we look closely at the historical record, the reality is unmistakable: Aboriginal people were forced to work in conditions that met every international definition of slavery.
The difference is in the name. Where America had “slavery,” Australia had “protection,” “guardianship,” or “employment under the Crown.” But the substance was the same: coercion, violence, unpaid labour, and the denial of freedom.
Frontier Workforces
Once massacres and punitive expeditions had reduced or displaced Aboriginal populations, colonists quickly realised that Aboriginal people could be used as labour.
- Pastoral industry: Men, women, and children were forced to work as shepherds, stockmen, cooks, and domestics on cattle and sheep stations.
- Agriculture: Aboriginal workers were essential in clearing land, harvesting crops, and maintaining farms.
- Domestic service: Aboriginal girls were often taken as servants, nannies, or cooks in settler households.
In many regions, the colonial economy could not function without Aboriginal labour.
Payment in Rations – or Nothing at All
Aboriginal workers were rarely paid wages. Instead, they received rations:
- Flour, sugar, tea, and sometimes tobacco or alcohol.
- Poor-quality clothing, often in exchange for months of work.
- Lodgings in rough huts or sheds.
This system was not just exploitative – it was deliberately structured to make Aboriginal people dependent on the settler economy while keeping them impoverished.
Children as Workers
Aboriginal children were particularly vulnerable:
- Many were forcibly removed from families and placed in missions, orphanages, or directly into settler households.
- Girls as young as 10 were sent to work as domestics.
- Boys were trained for farm or station labour.
- Wages, when promised, were almost always withheld or placed in “trust funds” controlled by governments – money that was never returned.
This theft of labour and income is part of what we now call the Stolen Wages.
Coercion and Violence
Labour was enforced through a mix of law and violence:
- “Masters” could withhold rations to starve workers into compliance.
- Police acted as enforcers, dragging people back to stations if they tried to leave.
- Punishments for “desertion” included beatings, chaining, or imprisonment.
The so-called “freedom” to refuse work rarely existed. Survival often depended on staying in the settler economy – a system deliberately structured so that Aboriginal people could not walk away.
Women and Sexual Exploitation
Aboriginal women bore a particular burden:
- Many were taken into domestic service where sexual abuse was common.
- On pastoral stations, women were forced into relationships with station owners or overseers.
- Children born of these abuses were often removed, further fracturing families.
This combination of forced labour and sexual exploitation was rarely acknowledged in official records, but it shaped generations of trauma.
Why It Was Slavery in All But Name
The United Nations definition of slavery includes situations where people are:
- Forced to work against their will.
- Controlled through violence or coercion.
- Paid little or nothing.
- Unable to leave.
By this definition, Aboriginal labour systems in colonial Australia were slavery. The refusal to call it that was deliberate – a way for the colony to present itself as “civilised” while reaping the benefits of forced labour.
Voices of Truth – Even Then
Not all settlers were blind to the injustice. Some missionaries, journalists, and officials wrote of the conditions with horror. Reports described Aboriginal workers “labouring as slaves” and condemned the withholding of wages.
But these truths were rarely acted upon. More often, they were buried in archives or dismissed as exaggeration, allowing the system to continue.
The Stolen Wages Legacy
Well into the 20th century, governments continued to control Aboriginal employment:
- In Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory, wages were placed in government “trust funds.”
- Only small amounts were released – often as little as pocket money.
- Billions of dollars in today’s value were never returned.
Campaigns for reparations continue, but most governments have offered only limited compensation — a fraction of what was stolen.
Why This Matters Today
Acknowledging slavery in Australia is not about importing another country’s history. It is about facing our own. The denial of slavery has been a shield, allowing Australians to believe in the myth of a “fair go” while ignoring the exploitation that built the economy.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the legacy is still felt: intergenerational poverty, dispossession, and mistrust of systems that once controlled every aspect of their working lives.
Where This Leads
Chains and prisons controlled bodies. Forced labour exploited those bodies for profit. But labour exploitation was not the end of colonisation’s reach. The destruction of culture, language, and law would strike at the heart of Aboriginal identity itself.
That is where we turn next: the deliberate attempt to erase culture in order to enforce assimilation.
Continued tomorrow…
Link to Part 6:
From Ignorance to Understanding: Facing the Truth of Colonisation (Part 6)
Link to Part 8:
From Ignorance to Understanding: Facing the Truth of Colonisation (Part 8)
Dear reader, we need your support
Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.
One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.
With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.
Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
“Slavery” takes many forms and Australia along with many other countries still has “slavery” today. When people are forced (by chains, finances of disability) to work for a subsistence income that is slavery.
Thank you, Jon, for your reply — you’re right that slavery in its many forms continues across the world today. We can see it in human trafficking, bonded labour, and the exploitation of migrant workers, often most entrenched in countries shaped by colonisation. And yes, many people describe the burden of modern mortgages, or being trapped in poverty through debt and wage suppression, as another kind of “economic slavery.”
But this article is about truth-telling on our own history here. Aboriginal people were subjected to actual slavery and forced labour during colonisation: stolen wages, children removed and placed into service, people made to work without rights. That’s not a metaphor — it’s documented fact.
The point we’re exploring in this series is how colonisation criminalised, dispossessed, and dehumanised Aboriginal peoples, and how those impacts are still lived today. So while I agree slavery in different forms is a global problem, the more urgent truth for us to face is how it unfolded here on this continent — and what justice requires now.
I’d invite you, Jon, to share your thoughts on that central theme: what truth-telling and accountability should look like in the Australian context. That’s where the real discussion lies.
Thank you for the invitation and I’ll start by saying I don’t disagree with you comment. Having said that we cannot correct the “slavery” of the past, we can address the “slavery” that is taking place today.
Colonisation with all it’s cruelties has been inflicted on just about every country and it’s people in our world, I’d suggest all people over the centuries have been and are suffering Intergenerational Trauma it in fact makes us what we are.
Sadly, I cannot tell you how to correct the past, when I look around it seems we are having trouble correcting the present and the future looks bleak.
My ‘own’ Kangaroo Island has a history of slavery:
“European settlement of the island began shortly after Flinders’ visit: escaped convicts seeking refuge, or wandering sealers and whalers bringing as company a number of Indigenous women abducted from the nearby mainland or from Tasmania. By 1826 the permanent population of the island numbered upwards of two hundred, still predominantly sealers, whalers, and ‘native’ women who continued to be stolen from their tribal homes.”
These unfortunate women were what you might call “sex slaves,” though there is no doubt they were also put to work.
On the positive side, in 2021, 49,491 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were attending a non-school education institution. Of those attending a non-school education institution in 2021: 42.6% were studying at universities or other higher education institutions, up from 32.8% in 2001.
Most places of higher education (Universities and TAFE) have a section of respective campuses dedicated to the needs of ATSI students, not found with any other ethnic grouping in Australia.
Significantly, The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical graduates has been increasing, with a record 51 graduates in 2024 and a program is underway to grow this workforce through dedicated scholarships and support programs like those offered by the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association (AIDA), with increased enrolments in health-related courses, aiming to improve health outcomes and create culturally safe healthcare environments.
Living in Far North Queensland and with extended family with Aboriginal heritage I see some very positive signs of the gap closing, with ATSI people very evident in all levels of our business and caring community; perhaps there has been greater effort here than in other parts of the country, I don’t know (?).
Jon, I really appreciate you coming back in good faith — and you’re right, colonisation and its cruelties have left intergenerational trauma across the globe. Where Australia is unique, though, is in the specific denial of Aboriginal sovereignty. As Michael reminds us with cases like R v Bonjon (1841) and the history of places like Kangaroo Island, Aboriginal people were not only dispossessed, they were subjected to slavery, forced labour, and brutal violence. Terry also highlights how it took the High Court in Mabo (1992) to overturn the legal fiction of terra nullius — an extraordinary delay in recognising what Aboriginal peoples always knew.
It’s true we can’t change the past. But truth-telling is about naming it honestly so we can understand today’s inequalities and repair the future. As Terry notes, there are signs of progress in education, health, and professional fields — but they sit alongside the unfinished business of truth, treaty, and justice.
That’s really the central theme of this series: how do we move from ignorance to understanding, and from there to accountability?