Since the colonisation of Australia by European settlers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have experienced extreme hardships, ranging from the loss of traditional culture and homelands to the forced removal of children and denial of citizenship rights.
Some of the worst crimes against humanity happened right here in Australia. Complete communities wiped out by gunfire, herded off cliffs, burned alive and poisonings by the use of strychnine which is widely regarded as one of the most excruciating ways to die.
European colonisation had a devastating impact on Aboriginal communities and cultures. 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.
Between 11,000 and 14,000 Aboriginal people died, compared with only 399 to 440 colonisers. The tallies of the dead are not the only measure of what took place, according to Dr Bill Pascoe, a digital humanities specialist and key researcher on the project. “We are always using conservative estimates,” Pascoe said.
Why were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken from their families? The forcible removal of First Nations children from their families was based on assimilation policies, which claimed that the lives of First Nations people would be improved if they became part of white society.
The Bringing Them Home report (produced by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families in 1987), says that "at least 100,000" children were removed from their parents.
This happened from the mid-1800s to the 1970s. In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600.
Real action needed on Aboriginal deaths in custody
Of the 516 recorded Indigenous people who died in custody since 1991, 335 were in prison, 177 were in police custody and four were in youth detention.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander imprisonment rate was 2,383 persons per 100,000 adult Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population up from: 2,354 in the September quarter 2022.
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.
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.
James Cook was the first recorded explorer to land on the east coast in 1770. He had with him maps showing the north, west and south coasts based on the earlier Dutch exploration.
Almost 70% of Australians accept that Aboriginal people were subject to mass killings, incarceration and forced removal from land, and their movement was restricted.
Indigenous people generally experience lower standards of health, education, employment and housing. They are over-represented in the criminal justice system and the care and protection systems nationally compared to non-Indigenous people.
Aboriginal Land
However, once European settlement began, Aboriginal rights to traditional lands were disregarded and the Aboriginal people of the Sydney region were almost obliterated by introduced diseases and, to a lesser extent, armed force.
On 26 January 1838 Nunn and his men massacred up to 50 Aboriginal people camped at Waterloo Creek.
In Australia, 812,000 people identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander in the 2021 Census of Population and Housing. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represented 3.2% of the population.
It is estimated that massacres by white settlers resulted in the death of approximately 11% of the Aboriginal population between 1836 and 1851.
Between 2014–15 and 2018–19, after adjusting for inflation, the median gross weekly personal income for Indigenous Australians aged 18 and over fell by 5.6%, from $518 to $489 (Figure 1).
Key statistics
As at 30 June 2021 there were 984,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, representing 3.8% of the total Australian population.
William 'King Billy' Lanne, the last male full blooded Aborigine in Tasmania, who died 150 years ago in 1869.
In NSW, under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board had wide ranging control over the lives of Aboriginal people, including the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families under a policy of 'assimilation'.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
The Stolen Generations refers to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were removed from their families between 1910 and 1970. This was done by Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, through a policy of assimilation.