Imperial authorities made new attempts to govern Aboriginal people in more systematic, humane ways – establishing protectorates, supporting missions, providing rationing, and prosecuting white men for frontier violence. Such measures often asserted the authority of the imperial centre. But settlers rejected these attempts to limit their access to Aboriginal land or hold them responsible for Aboriginal welfare or survival. Colonists in New South Wales and its new settlement of Port Phillip voiced their opposition to Aboriginal protection in terms of the citizenship of free white men; protection policies were portrayed as a product of distant, dictatorial government, proof of the need for colonists to govern themselves locally. Protection policies were less controversial in South Australia and Western Australia, but there they were accompanied by punitive interventions: police and military expeditions against Aboriginal people, controversies over whether Aboriginal people were British subjects, and the establishment of the infamous Rottnest Island prison. The same imperial authorities that called for Aboriginal protection were also deeply complicit in settler-colonialism and land theft. However, this era was also distinguished by early Aboriginal political activism. Faced with dispossession, Aboriginal people launched new attempts to engage with colonial authority figures, asserting their rights to land, liberty and survival.