List of massacres of Indigenous Australians

The colonial Australian frontier war was unofficial, undeclared and unrecorded. The official actions of government forces were typically veiled as "policing" and "law-enforcement." The reason was simple, put by numerous primary sources, police were not constitutionally allowed to engage in acts of warfare. Thus it was noted in 1868 by chief justice Charles Lilley in Queensland that the Native Police Force is an unlawful "avenging force" and that there was "not a single line" to make this force "a legal force". Indeed, "there was nothing in the common law of England, or in the law of nations, to justify the conduct of the white population towards the aboriginal inhabitants of the country".[1] In 1879, a former officer in the Queensland frontier force stated openly that;

"Of all semi-military or police organizations under the British flag, the native mounted police of Queensland is certainly the most anomalous. Successively has such a force operated in protecting pioneer occupation in both Victoria and New South Wales, but never from its origin to its existence in Queensland at the present moment, has its legitimacy been defined. In point of fact it stands as the most illegal force ever constituted, having the powers of life and death, without the sanction of militarians, as provided by enrollment under the Articles of War and the Military Act. Not being so, it is nevertheless a life-destroying instead of a criminal arresting force, and carries out its sanguinary will without the intervention of judge, jury, or law. Practically, there is no appeal from its almighty vengeance."[2]

Similar and contemporary comments on this issue can be found numerous places[3]). Frontier collisions and punitive expeditions against indigenous people on Australia's frontier were thus generally veiled in secrecy due to fear of possible legal consequences, especially following the Myall Creek Massacre in 1838.[4]

In cases where reports had to be written, the records can at times be seen as having been later destroyed. Recent studies into the most significant and notorious case of this kind, that of Queensland and its Native Police Force, show that all Native Police reports and monthly enumerations of patrols originally stored in the Queensland Police Department went missing sometime after 1905 when the last station closed.[5] It is generally acknowledged that the European as well as indigenous death toll in frontier conflicts and massacres in Queensland exceeded that of all other Australian colonies, yet it is certainly not possible to map out more than a small percentage of the numerous massacre sites in Queensland. We can calculate in various ways the minimum amount of frontier 'dispersals' performed by the Native Police Force during half a century (as was indeed done recently by Dr Raymond Evans and Robert Orsted-Jensen based on a small portion of monthly native police summaries of now lost 'collision reports' stored in the archives). However, we will never be able to locate or describe in detail more than a small percentage of these events. Thus any attempt to list all events of this kind will of nature (at least in Queensland), be more deceptive than revealing.[6]

The concepts of invasion, frontier wars and massacres, although frequently mentioned and debated in the early Australian legislatures, has become a highly contentious issues in modern Australia. For discussion of the historical arguments about these conflicts, see the articles on the History Wars and in particular the section on the "black armband" view of history, plus the section on impact of European settlement in the article on Indigenous Australians. In total at least 20,000 indigenous Australians died from conflict and massacre with white Australians whilst between 2,000 and 2,500 white Australians died.

The following provisory list tallies a few of the better documented massacres of Aboriginal Australians, which took place mainly during the colonial period.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Some frontier collisions and massacres on record

1780s

1790s

1810s

1820s

1830s

1840s

Tasmania

1800s

1820s

Victoria

1830s

1840s

Western Australia

1830s

1840s

1860s

South Australia


Queensland

1840s

1850s

1860s

1870s

1880s

1890s

Northern Territory

1870s

1880-90s

Violence and massacres after federation

Western Australia

Kimberley region - The Killing Times - 1890-1920: The massacres listed below have been depicted in modern Australian Aboriginal art from the Warmun/Turkey Creek community who were members of the tribes affected. Oral history of the massacres were passed down and artists such as the late Rover Thomas have depicted the massacres.

1910s

1920s

Queensland

1910s

Northern Territory

1920s

See also

References

  1. Queensland Political Debate Legislative Aassembly Thursday, 6 Feb 1868, p948-963.
  2. Town and Country Journal 15 Mar 1879, p31a-c.‘Reminiscences of The Native Mounted Police of Queensland’
  3. See among others W. Ross Johnston's book on the Queensland police force, "The Long Blue Line", chapter 9, 1992, pages 86, 88-95; see also the editorial in the Brisbane Courier 11 May 1863, p2c, with references to the unconstitutionality of the so called "police". See also debate in Queensland legislative Assembly in 1868 (Quensland Political Debate 15 Jan 1868. ‘POLICE EXPENSES’ (as per Brisbane Courier Jan 16 1868, p3f-4c.)
  4. A Dirk Moses, 'Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History,' in A. Dirk Moses (ed.) Genocide And Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, Berghahn Books, 2004 pp.3-48 p.24. Cf.pp.165,167,204.
  5. Ørsted-Jensen, Robert: Frontier History Revisited (Brisbane 2011), chapter 5 and appendix B 'What do the Archived Records Reveal about the Reports of the Native Police Force?'
  6. Evans, Raymond & Ørsted–Jensen, Robert: "I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed: Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier” (paper at AHA 9 July 2014 at University of Queensland) publisher Social Science Research Network. See also Evans, Raymond: The country has another past: Queensland and the History Wars, in ‘Passionate Histories: Myth, memory and Indigenous Australia’ Aboriginal History Monograph 21, September 2010. Edited by Frances Peters-Little, Ann Curthoys and John Docker.
  7. Journal of Australian Studies http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443058.2013.849750#preview
  8. "Chicken pox or smallpox in the colony at Sydney Cove in April, 1789". Radio National. Retrieved 22 November 2014.
  9. Watkin Tench, 1788 (ed: Tim Flannery), 1996, ISBN 1-875847-27-8, p167
  10. 1 2 Tench, p 166
  11. Kohen, J (1993). The Darug and their Neighbours: The Traditional Aboriginal Owners of the Sydney Region.
  12. Kass, Terry. "Western Sydney Thematic History" (PDF). State Heritage Register Project. NSW Heritage Office. Retrieved 7 June 2012.
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  18. Robert Manne, In denial: the stolen generations and the right, Black Inc., 2001 p.95
  19. R. Milliss, Waterloo Creek: the Australia Day massacre of 1838, George Gipps and the British conquest of New South Wales, University of New South Wales Press, 1994 p.2
  20. Chris Clark, The Encyclopaedia of Australia's Battles,Allen & Unwin, 2010p.13
  21. 1 2 3 Bruce Elder (1998). Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788. Pg 94: New Holland Publishers. ISBN 1-86436-410-6.
  22. Mary Durack, Kings in Grass Castles, (1959) cited in Peter Knight, Jonathan Long Fakes and forgeries, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004 p.136
  23. Raymond Evans,A History of Queensland, Cambridge University Press, 2007 p.54
  24. Henry Meyrick 1846 cited Michael Cannon, Life in the Country: Australia in the Victorian Age,:2, (1973) Nelson 1978 p.78, also cited in Ben Kiernan’s Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur, Yale University Press, 2007 p.298
  25. Robert Manne, In denial: the stolen generations and the right, Black Inc., 2001 p.96
  26. A. Dirk Moses, Frontier violence and stolen indigenous children in Australian history, Berghahn Books, 2004 p.205
  27. Geoffrey Blomfield, Baal Belbora, the end of the dancing: the agony of the British invasion of the ancient people of Three Rivers:the Hastings, the Manning & the Macleay, in New South Wales Apcol 1981 cited Aboriginal history, Volumes 6-8, ANU 1982 p.35
  28. Claire Smith, Country, kin and culture: survival of an Australian Aboriginal community, Wakefield Press, 2005 p.18
  29. Gerhard Leitner, Ian G. Malcolm, The habitat of Australia's aboriginal languages: past, present and future, Walter de Gruyter, 2007 pp.143-4
  30. Deborah Bird Rose, Hidden histories: black stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River, and Wave Hill Stations, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1991 p.23
  31. D.Byrne, ‘A Critique of unfeeling heritage,’ in Laurajane Smith, Natsuko Akagawa (eds.) Intangible heritage, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2009 pp.229-253, p.233
  32. Ben Kiernan Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur, Yale University Press 2007 p.296
  33. Ian D. Clark Scars in the landscape: a register of massacre sites in western Victoria, 1803-1859, Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 1995 pp.1-4
  34. Bronwyn Batten, ‘The Myall Creek Memorial:history, identity and reconciliation,’ in William Logan, William Stewart Logan, Keir Reeves (eds.) Places of pain and shame: dealing with 'difficult heritage', Taylor & Francis, 2009 pp.82-96, p.85
  35. Rosemary Neill White out: how politics is killing black Australia, Allen & Unwin, 2002 p.76
  36. Richard Broome Aboriginal Victorians:a history since 1800, Allen & Unwin, 2005 p.80
  37. Kay Schaffer In the wake of first contact: the Eliza Fraser stories, Cambridge University Press Archive 1995 p.243
  38. Gay McAuley Unstable ground: performance and the politics of place, Peter Lang, 2006 p.163
  39. Christine Halse A Terribly Wild Man, Allen & Unwin, 2002 p.99
  40. Jeffrey Grey, A military history of Australia, Cambridge University Press, 2008 p.35-37
  41. 1 2 Bruce Elder (1998). Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788. (extracts from Australian dictionary of dates and men of the time: containing the history of Australasia from 1542 to May 1879 Published 1879): New Holland Publishers. ISBN 1-86436-410-6.
  42. State Library of South Australia http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/murray/content/europeanDiscovery/overlandersIntro.htm#friction
  43. http://www.smh.com.au/news/New-South-Wales/Nyngan/2005/02/17/1108500198358.html
  44. W.F.Refshauge (2007). "An analytical approach to the events at Risdon Cove on 3 May 1804". Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, June 2007.
  45. 02 Sep 1804 - NATIVES. Trove.nla.gov.au. Retrieved on 2013-09-27.
  46. Phillip Tardif (6 April 2003). "So who's fabricating the history of Aborigines?". Melbourne: The Age, 6 April 2003.
  47. Ian McFarlane, Cape Grim Massacre 2006, accessed 26 December 2008
  48. Jan Roberts, pp1-9, Jack of Cape Grim, Greenhouse Publications, 1986 ISBN 0-86436-007-X
  49. Lyndall Ryan, pp135-137, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Allen & Unwin, 1996, ISBN 1-86373-965-3
  50. Ann Curthoys ‘Genocide in Tasmania: The History of an Idea,’ in A. Dirk Moses (ed.) Empire, colony, genocide: conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in World History, Berghahn Books, 2008 ch.10 pp.229-252, pp.230, 245-6
  51. Clark, Ian D. (1998). "Convincing Ground". Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria, 1883 - 1859. Museum Victoria. Retrieved 18 May 2007. ... and the whalers having used their guns beat them off and hence called the spot the Convincing Ground.
  52. Martin Boulton, Anger over plans to build on massacre site, The Age, 28 January 2005. Accessed 26 November 2008
  53. Ian D. Clark, pp17-22, Scars on the Landscape. A Register of Massacre sites in Western Victoria 1803-1859, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1995 ISBN 0-85575-281-5 Excerpt also published on Museum Victoria website, accessed 26 November 2008
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  56. Chris Clark, The Encyclopaedia of Australia's Battles p.14
  57. Lady Jane Griffin Franklin. Penny Russell, ed. This Errant Lady. National Library of Australia. p. 47–48. Retrieved 23 November 2014.
  58. Bain Attwood, pp7-9 My Country. A history of the Djadja Wurrung 1837-1864, Monash Publications in History:25, 1999, ISSN 0818-0032
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  60. Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil, p.300.
  61. Michael Cannon,Life in the Country,1978 p.76.
  62. Chris Clark, The Encyclopaedia of Australia's Battles, Allen & Unwin, 2010 p.16.
  63. Ben Kiernan, Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur, Yale University Press, 2007 p.298
  64. Michael Cannon, Life in the Country: Australia in the Victorian Age,:2, (1973) Nelson 1978 p.78
  65. A. G. L. Shaw, A History of Port Phillip District: Victoria Before Separation, Melbourne University Publishing, 2003 p.132.
  66. 1 2 3 Heathcoate 1965.
  67. "Study guide to "My Place" by Sally Morgan". Retrieved 22 November 2014.
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  69. Ben Kiernan, Genocide and resistance in Southeast Asia: documentation, denial & justice in Cambodia & East Timor,Transaction Publishers, 2008 p.264.
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  77. Rosemary Van Den Berg, Nyoongar People of Australia: Perspectives on Racism and Multiculturalism, BRILL, 2002 p.72.
  78. Rodney Harrison, 'Landscapes of pastoralism in north-west Australia,' in Tim Murray (ed.)The Archaeology of Contact in Settler Societies, Cambridge University Press, 2004 pp.109ff., p.113.
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  80. Liam Gearon, Human Rights and Religion, Sussex Academic Press, 2002 p.331
  81. Heather McDonald, Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town, Melbourne University Press, 2001 p.55. Two others occurred, according to one native informant's memory, in the 1930s.
  82. Foster, Robert, Richard Hosking, and Amanda Nettleback (2001), pp74-93, Fatal Collisions: The South Australian Frontier and the Violence of Memory, Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2001 ISBN 1-86254-533-2
  83. Christina Smith, pp62, The Booandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: A Sketch of Their Habits, Customs, Legends, and Language, Spiller, 1880
  84. Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil, p.303
  85. Evans, Raymond (2007). A History of Queensland. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87692-6. , p. 54
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  87. Maryborough Chronicle 14 May 1870, page 2: “Reminiscences of Another Wide Bay Pioneer” (I); J. Nolan: Bundaberg, chapter 2; Clem Lack ‘One hundred years young: Bundaberg, the city of charm, 1867-1967' 56 pages publ. Bundaberg 'News-Mail' 23 May 1967.
  88. Reid, Gordon: Nest of Hornets: The Massacre of the Fraser Family at Hornet Bank Station, Central Queensland, 1857, and Related Events, Melbourne: Oxford University, 1982 ISBN 0-19-554358-0
  89. Bundaberg Mail 21 Jan 1895, page 2; Maryborough Chronicle 22 Jan 1895, page 2; Brisbane Courier 28 Jan 1895, page 3.
  90. Ross Gibson, Seven versions of an Australian badland, Univ. of Queensland Press, 2008, pp.66-67.see also Ørsted-Jensen, Robert: Frontier History Revisited (Brisbane 2011), page 71.
  91. Lumholtz: Among Cannibals: an account of four years travels in Australia, and of camp life with the aborigines of Queensland (London 1889) page 58-9: Queenslander 20 Apr 1901, page 757-758: "The Massacre of the Blacks at the Skull Hole on Mistake Creek". See also Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, page 172-174.
  92. Ørsted-Jensen, Robert: Frontier History Revisited (Brisbane 2011), page 73.
  93. Ørsted-Jensen, Robert: Frontier History Revisited (Brisbane 2011), page 72.
  94. Daily News (Brisbane) 1 Jan 1879, page 2.
  95. Queenslander 8 Mar 1879, page 294; T. Bottoms Conspiracy of Silence page 162-163
  96. Ørsted-Jensen, Robert: Frontier History Revisited (Brisbane 2011), page 54-55 & 126.
  97. "BIRDSVILLE OR BUST". Joe the Rainmaker. Kevin JR Murphy. 2003.
  98. Indigenous Community in Kuranda Retrieved 3 May 2007.
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  101. http://www.ards.com.au/whywarriors.htm
  102. ‘The massacre of Aboriginal people in a ‘war of extermination’ was widespread and relentless. As one of the early missionaries, R.D.Joynt, wrote (1918:7), hundred had been “shot down like game.” And possibility, however, that they might have succeeded in preserving their cultural integrity ended drastically around the start of the 20th century when a huge London-based cattle consortium The Eastern and African Cold Storage Company acquired massive tracts of land to carve out a pastoral empire from the Roper River north into Arnhem Land. Purchasing all stocked and viable stations along the western Roper River, they began moving cattle eastward. Determined to put down all Aboriginal resistance, they employed gangs of up to 14 men to hunt down all inhabitants of the region and shoot them on sight. With police and other authorities maintaining a “conspiracy of silence”, they staged a systematic campaign of extermination against the Roper River peoples (Harris 1994:695-700). They almost succeeded.’ Gerhard Leitner, Ian G. Malcolm, The habitat of Australia's aboriginal languages: past, present and future, Walter de Gruyter, 2007 pp.143-4
  103. Remote Area Tours - History
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  105. 1 2 Review of exhibitions and public programs National Museum of Australia
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  107. Nevill Drury, Anna Voigt, Fire and shadow: spirituality in contemporary Australian art,Craftsman House, 1996 p.84
  108. "ABC 7:30 report". Retrieved 22 November 2014.
  109. Was There a Massacre at Bedford Downs? Rod Moran, Quadrant Magazine. Retrieved 3 May 2007.
  110. Moran, Rod (1999). Massacre myth: An investigation into allegations concerning the mass murder of Aborigines at Forrest River. Bassendean: Access Press. ISBN 0-86445-124-5, pp130-132,232
  111. Bruce Elder (1998). Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788. Page 203 - 206: New Holland Publishers. ISBN 1-86436-410-6.
  112. Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker Dreamings--Tjukurrpa: aboriginal art of the Western Desert, the Donald Kahn Collection, Prestel, 1994
  113. Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission 'Bringing Them Home' website
  114. Frontier Education history website, Australian Broadcasting Corporation Coniston Massacre, National Museum of Australia

External links

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