Policing Indigenous Peoples on Two Colonial Frontiers: Australia's Mounted Police and Canada's North-West Mounted Police

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which colonial policing and punishment of Indigenous peoples evolved as an inherent part of the colonial state-building process on the connected 19th century frontiers of south-central Australia and western Canada. Although there has been some excellent historical scholarship on the relationship between Indigenous people, police and the law in colonial settings, there has been little comparative analysis of the broader, cross-national patterns by which Indigenous peoples were made subject to British law, most especially through colonial policing practices. This article compares the roles, as well as the historical reputations, of Australia's mounted police and Canada's North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) in order to argue that these British colonies, being within the ambit of the law as British subjects did not accord Indigenous peoples the rights of protection that status was intended to impart.