The Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, Ross Gibbs, has announced a partnership between the Archives and University of Queensland lecturer Dr Heather Douglas to investigate the policy, process and problems involved in naming and registering Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory between 1953 and 1957.

Dr Douglas is based at the University’s TC Beirne Law School and this year completed a PhD on the historical way in which the law has attempted to narrate Indigenous people’s lives.

Mr Gibbs said that one of the priorities for the Archives is to offer Australians access to a national archival collection that will assist them to understand their heritage and democracy.

‘Dr Douglas’s project will make a substantial contribution to our understanding of the assimilation process in Australia,’ Mr Gibbs said. ‘Through our grants program Dr Douglas will be able to access digitised material online, as well as visit the Archives’ Darwin and Canberra offices’.

Dr Douglas says the material divides roughly into two broad areas – material relating to the activities of the patrol officers in the 1950s, and information on the government management of the welfare legislation, including the policies, training and directions provided to the officers.

Her research will be of interest to historians, including legal historians, and to those interested in post-colonial studies, anthropology and sociology.