Chapter 5 considers how protection offices around the British Empire might have held utility for the people to whom they applied, no matter how compromised that utility might have been. Slaves and indentured labourers leveraged the protection office in so far as they were able, even as those offices worked to regulate their status as colonial subjects. Similarly, the Aboriginal protection offices opened avenues for indigenous diplomacy and political action, even as they carried colonial intrusion into indigenous country. Over the years, indigenous people worked with or for Protectors in various capacities. On some occasions they enlisted Protectors to represent their grievance,s and on others they rejected Protectors’ efforts to interfere in their lives and laws. While Protectors often presumed to hold influence and authority, they also lamented their inability to reform indigenous laws and cultural practices in any enduring way. The culture of protection that emerged from this complex set of relationships was not monolithic or stable but constantly fluid, subject to vacillations between collaboration and conflict.