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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the roles of accounting within state-based agencies which interpreted the ideal of protection for the Aboriginal population as principally about the removal of children from the Aboriginal communities to institutions of training and places of forced indenture under government-negotiated labour contracts.

The study uses the original archival records of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection and Welfare Boards (1883-1950) to highlight the link between pastoral notions of moral betterment and the use of accounting technologies to organise and implement the “apprenticeship” programmes.

The analysis reveals that accounting practices and information were integral to the ability of the state to intervene and organise this domain of action and, together with a legal framework, to make the forced removal of Aboriginal children possible.

The mentalities and practices of assimilation analysed in the paper are not unique to the era of “protection”. The study provides a history of the present that evokes the antecedents to recent welfare policy changes, which encompass a political rationality directed at the normalisation of the economic and social behaviours of both indigenous and non-indigenous welfare recipients.

The paper provides an historical example of how the state enlisted accounting and legal technologies to construct a crisis of “neglect” and to intervene to protect and assimilate the Aboriginal children.

Traditionally, mainstream cross‐cultural accounting research has applied a societal norms and values measure to the examination of differences in culture. This approach is limited, however, because it effectively disfranchises the culture of minority groups such as indigenous peoples within nations. Our paper provides evidence of cultural differences between indigenous Australian values and the Western capitalist values implicit in the language of accounting and accountability. Utilising an alternative yin/yang framework developed for accounting by Hines, we argue that the core indigenous yin values of sharing, relatedness and kinship obligations inherent in indigenous conceptions of work and land, are incompatible with the yang values of quantification, objectivity, efficiency, productivity, reason and logic imposed by accounting and accountability systems. This conflict of values then brings into question the impact of accounting and accountability systems on the indigenous peoples of Australia whose beliefs, norms and values are organised differently. The need to address such a conflict is critical for all of the world’s indigenous peoples. Perhaps even more so for the Australian indigenous peoples because of the insistence by governments, at both the state and federal levels, that the extreme social and economic disadvantages experienced by the Australian indigenous peoples can be dissipated by the imposition of strict financial accountability measures for all indigenous organisations and representative bodies. We argue that the demonstrated conflict of values is a significant reason for the inability of accounting and accountability systems to deliver such social and economic outcomes. The research findings of non‐indigenous researchers are largely drawn on in this paper. The two authors of this paper are not indigenous people and therefore we are speaking “of” indigenous culture and not “speaking for” them.

Examines the issues arising from the enforcing of a Western form of accountability on the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples. Aboriginal organizations such as the ATSI Commission (ASTIC) are set up under a policy of self‐determination. Policy makers need to balance the tension between the policy of self‐determination and the need for accountability. This tension may be expressed as a conflict between Aboriginal organizations’ (or agents’) accountability to governments (or principals) and their responsibility to “higher principals”, their “Dreaming Law”. Seeks an understanding of Aboriginal culture and highlights areas of conflict between systems of financial accountability and Aboriginal culture. Unless systems of accountability applied to the Aboriginal context take into account Aboriginal culture, they can be disempowering and alienating. Recommends further dialogue with the ATSI peoples to develop a more enabling form of accountability.

The paper draws attention to the potential of some strands of postmodern and related work for stimulating and furthering research into accounting and indigenous cultures and peoples. We overview some key areas of interest, showing their interface with accounting in general and with the papers published in this special issue in particular. We end our elaborations with suggestions for further research.

Differences between UK countries in HE policy and provision concerning the accessibility of HE study for students, and the costs of that study, have implications for cross-border study mobility. Those qualified for and wishing to enter HE are affected both by financial support for students and the provision of the HE service in terms of the number of places and the shape and history of the sector within their home country, and in comparison to other countries of the UK. In addition, funding policies for mobile students do not recognise social diversity and so have an unequal impact on students in relation to their socio-economic resources, a consequence of the territorial frame of reference and unequal devolution arrangements which work against a UK-wide social citizenship. Drawing on a quantitative analysis of student data, this chapter discusses the unequal conditions of access, opportunity and financial support for HE across the UK and how this may have a negative impact on the role of cross-border mobility in widening participation.