Genocide of Indigenous Australians

The colonization of Australia by the British, starting in 1788, marked the beginning of a catastrophic impact on the Indigenous populations, who had lived continuously on the continent for around 60,000 years prior to European settlement.^[4][5][6] Some of the catastrophic impacts upon the indigenous population came about somewhat inadvertently (e.g. those caused by disease introduction, or agricultural displacement^[7]). However, other impacts upon the population were more deliberate, and would fairly be described by modern scholars as historical acts of genocide.

Some acts of genocide perpetrated against Indigenous Australians included:

1. Massacres:^{[8][page needed]} particularly in the frontier wars, there were numerous recorded and unrecorded deliberate massacres of Indigenous Australians by colonists, and by Australian State Police and militias.^[9] These acts were often carried out pre-emptively, or in retaliation against, violent resistance by Indigenous Australians against the occupation of their lands.^[10] In some instances massacres were carried out merely due to motivations involving hatred and racial prejudice of the perpetrator.
2. Dispersal campaigns: some scholars have described extermination campaigns undertaken in the 1800s, aimed at dispersing and displacing indigenous Australians from their lands as a form of genocide.^[11] An example of this was a collaboration between white settlers and the State of Western Australia to erase the presence of Indigenous Australians from the southwest of WA between 1900 and 1940.^[12]
3. Forced removals: policies enacted by Australian state governments involved the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families.^[13][14] A well-known example of this practice has been acknowledged by the term "Stolen Generations",^[15] whereby children were placed in institutions or forcibly adopted by non-Indigenous families with the intent of assimilating them into white society, and discouraging indigenous languages and culture.^[16][17] These policies were sometimes undertaken by eugenicists, such as A. O. Neville, and argued for on the basis of ostensible "benefits" bestowed upon victims of the practice. It was a common early 20th century view that Indigenous Australians were dying out.^[18]
4. Assimilation policies: other legislation and policies were designed to assimilate Indigenous Australians into European-Australian society.^[19] In many schools, children were punished for speaking their native language. Additional restrictions were placed on movement, marriage, employment, and the practice of traditional ceremonies and legal systems.^[20] Collectively, these policies have been argued by some scholars as an act of cultural genocide. Some scholars have argued against the characterization of these policies after 1945 as genocidal in intent, and have argued that they were aimed instead at ensuring survival of indigenous peoples.^[21]
5. Ongoing cultural genocidal policies: a minority of scholars consider genocidal structuring dynamics continue to operate in Australia, however the opinions of these scholars are a distinct minority opinion in genocide scholarship and popular discourse.^[11]

The genocide of Indigenous Australians has left deep scars on communities in Australia, with ongoing impacts on cultural heritage, languages, and people groups. The recognition of historical injustices in Australia has been relatively slow. Efforts to acknowledge and reconcile these actions started toward the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

One watershed moment was the Bringing Them Home report, which contained the findings of the federal government inquiry into the removal of thousands of Aboriginal children.^[15] The report argued that the Commonwealth Government was guilty of the crime of genocide; under the UN Convention defining genocide as "intentional destruction of a racial, religious, national, or ethnic group".^[22]

Since 1998 Australia has acknowledged the harms caused to Indigenous Australians in a National Sorry Day on May 26. In addition, a formal apology was delivered to the Stolen Generations by prime minister Kevin Rudd on behalf of the Australian Parliament in 2008. In recent decades the Australian Government has pursued a policy titled "Closing the Gap" partly in an effort to redress some of the harms caused by prior policy.

There remains ongoing debate about the characterization of the historical events that Indigenous Australians faced as a form of "genocide".^{[23][page needed]} Some argue that the actions meet the legal definition outlined in the United Nations Genocide Convention, while others express a contrary view. Scholars such as Robert van Krieken have argued that the debate often involves a continuing dispute as to how broadly the concept of genocide ought to be understood. Narrow conceptions of genocide are restricted to killing, whereas the broader definition includes other ways a human group can be "eliminated", including the destruction of cultural identity.^{[24][page needed]} Some scholars have said in relation to this "Australia's record on Indigenous Australians is at best ambiguous, and at worst an example of genocide by eugenics".^[25]

Black War

The near-destruction of Tasmania's Aboriginal population has been described as an act of genocide by historians including Robert Hughes, James Boyce, Lyndall Ryan, Tom Lawson, Mohamed Adhikari, Benjamin Madley, and Ashley Riley Sousa.^[26] The author of the concept of genocide, Raphael Lemkin, considered Tasmania the site of one of the world's clear cases of genocide^[27] and Hughes has described the loss of Aboriginal Tasmanians as "the only true genocide in English colonial history".^[28]

Queensland Aboriginal genocide

Queensland represents the single bloodiest colonial frontier in Australia.^[29][30] Thus the records of Queensland document the most frequent reports of shootings and massacres of indigenous people and the most disreputable frontier police force.^[31] Thus some sources have characterized these events as a "Queensland Aboriginal genocide".^{[32][33][34][35]} In 2009 professor Raymond Evans calculated the Indigenous fatalities caused by the Queensland Native Police Force alone as no less than 24,000.^[36]

Some scholars have argued that the genocide against Indigenous Australians continues, especially through contemporary cultural destructive policies.^[37] These scholars are part of a minority opinion in both formal academic scholarship on genocide and in popular discourse.^[11]

• List of massacres of Indigenous Australians

Works cited