Official records state at least 40 men, women and children were killed, but other historians suggest hundreds of Aboriginal people died that day. Today, the site of the killings bears no obvious evidence of the murders.
Between 11,000 and 14,000 Aboriginal people died, compared with only 399 to 440 colonisers.
With the doctrine of terra nullius in hand, 11 convict ships from Great Britain sailed into what's now Port Jackson in New South Wales on January 26, 1788. Shortly after their arrival, Captain Arthur Phillip made his way to the shore and raised the British flag claiming the land in the name of King George III.
The research project, currently in its eighth year and led by University of Newcastle historian Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan, now estimates more than 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives were lost in more than 400 massacres, up from a previous estimate of 8,400 in 302 massacres.
1830s. 1830. Fremantle: The first official "punishment raid" on Aboriginal people in Western Australia, led by Captain Irwin, took place in May 1830.
On 26 January 1838 Nunn and his men massacred up to 50 Aboriginal people camped at Waterloo Creek.
From 1788, Australia was treated by the British as a colony of settlement, not of conquest. Aboriginal land was taken over by British colonists on the premise that the land belonged to no-one ('terra nullius').
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Attempts at the mass killing of Aboriginal people were still being made as recently as 1981, according to a historian who has spent the past four years researching colonial violence in the Northern Territory.
Indigenous tribes often fought with each other rather than launch coordinated attacks against settlers. An alternative view comes from expert in indigenous history, Dr Ray Kerkhove, who has done new research on indigenous warfare in Queensland in the 19th century.
Australia Day is also referred to as 'Invasion Day' or 'Survival Day' particularly by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. This is because it 'celebrates' a painful part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history.
Australia was a collection of British colonies from 1788 until 1901. The first colonies were established as places where criminals were sent to live and work. These were known as convict settlements or penal colonies. Later, colonies were established by free settlers.
Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600. The Indigenous Australian population is projected to reach about 1.1 million people by 2031 (ABS 2019b).
ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER POPULATION
Estimates were based on post-1788 observations of a population already reduced by introduced diseases and other factors, and range from a minimum pre-1788 population of 315,000 to over one million people.
The death toll resulting from the Frontier Wars is hard to know for certain, but it is estimated that around 2000 – 5000 colonists were killed over the years while the death toll is for Aboriginal people is unknown as it is so high.
Starting in 1794, mass killings were first carried out by British soldiers, then by police and settlers – often acting together – and later by native police, working under the command of white officers, in militia-style forces supported by colonial governments.
The claim that a “Licence To Shoot Aborigines” was distributed in Australia as part of a 1965 pest control law is false. The supposed licence is a fake and can be traced back to a racist propaganda leaflet distributed in the 1990s. Indigenous history experts confirmed no such licence ever existed.
The British settlement in Australia was not peaceful. Aboriginal people were moved off their traditional land and killed in battles or by hunting parties. European diseases such as measles and tuberculosis also killed many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Aboriginal people were subjected to a range of injustices, including mass killings or being displaced from their traditional lands and relocated on missions and reserves in the name of protection. Cultural practices were denied, and subsequently many were lost.
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
The first settlement, at Sydney, consisted of about 850 convicts and their Marine guards and officers, led by Governor Arthur Phillip. They arrived at Botany Bay in the "First Fleet" of 9 transport ships accompanied by 2 small warships, in January, 1788.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'. It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested the name we use today.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.