Tory Shepherd writes in Guardian Australia about a recently published article from multiple authors in Nature Human Behaviour.
The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia before colonisation was dramatically underestimated, according to new research that suggests many more of them were killed.
Modelling by a national research group puts the population levels before the 1788 first fleet arrived at 2.2 million, compared with early estimates of 250,000 people.
Population estimates have been poor “due to lethal diseases, frontier and structural violence, and absence of systematic censuses” and that it’s “invaluable to truth-telling and reconciliation” to try to rectify that.
Lead author, Professor Corey Bradshaw, says:
“If you’re a frontier farmer, a colonialist that came out to a new area, and you were trying to remove people from ‘your’ land, you’re not going to write extensively about how many people you killed to do that,” he said.
“There’s another component here that’s essentially greed and racism – the entire concept of terra nullius was based on not many people being here. If there’s a systematic desire to take land [fewer people means a] better justification for imperialism.”
The research concludes that the estimate of 2.2 million, along with a new estimate of 2.06 million excess deaths between 1788 and 1861, means the population was reduced to about 7 per cent of its original size.
“We are not talking about a marginal consequence of colonisation but a demographic catastrophe at the heart of the Australian story", says Professor Larissa Behrendt, Euahleyai/Gamillaroi.
“The findings highlight the scale of demographic catastrophe experienced by Indigenous Australians due to colonisation, with the implications being a heightened understanding of intergenerational trauma and to inform future policy that assists Indigenous people”, says Professor Lynette Russell, Wotabaluk, and co-author of the study.
Professors Behrendt and Russell are among Defending Country's distinguished Supporters.
Picture credit: Conflict on the Rufus, South Australia [1866]: Samuel Calvert, engraver, from a sketch by WA Cawthorne, State Library of Victoria: PCINF; IMP 27-07-66 P.308. The so-called Rufus River Massacre was in 1841. It actually included fierce resistance by First Nations people. It is the sort of event that would be covered by a War Memorial firmly and bravely presenting the Australian Wars. Discussion of Rufus River by Amanda Nettlebeck, Journal of Australian Studies, 1999.
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