It is estimated that massacres by white settlers resulted in the death of approximately 11% of the Aboriginal population between 1836 and 1851.
In an analysis by Guardian Australia based on the data, Aboriginal deaths were estimated to be 27 to 33 times higher than coloniser deaths. Between 11,000 and 14,000 Aboriginal people died, compared with only 399 to 440 colonisers.
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.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
In the period 2017–2021, the crude death rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was 455 per 100,000 population. The crude death rate for non-Indigenous Australians was 659 per 100,000 population.
It's estimated that as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children were taken between 1910 and the 1970s, affecting most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia. This all took place under past Australian Government policies.
The total number of deaths following British settlement in 1788 has long been debated, but many historians estimate it numbered tens of thousands.
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. This was up from 2.8% in 2016, and 2.5% in 2011.
In Remote and very remote areas combined, circulatory diseases contributed the biggest gap in mortality rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians (gap of 187 per 100,000). In non-remote areas cancer and other neoplasms were the biggest contributors to the gap (gap of 45 per 100,000) (Table D1.
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.
After the last census in 2011, the Australian National University's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research determined that the number of people who identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander had increased by 20% since 2006. The national census is taken every five years.
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.
By the 1830s, frontier violence around NSW had become so widespread that the murder of Aboriginal people by British colonial stockmen, settlers and convicts was generally accepted, despite British law clearly articulating that it was a crime punishable by death.
The Killing Times is a Guardian Australia special report that aims to assemble information necessary to begin truth telling – not just the grim tally of more than a century of frontier bloodshed, but its human cost – as told by descendants on all sides.
There were 13,716 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, up from: 13,197 in the December quarter 2022. 12,566 in the March quarter 2022.
Estimates of numbers have been widely disputed. 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.
Under the laws of the Australian Government, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not included as citizens. Instead, in many cases they were treated as foreigners in their own land.
In 2021–22, there were 106 deaths in custody: 84 in prison custody and 22 in police custody or custody-related operations. In total, there were 24 Indigenous deaths and 81 non-Indigenous deaths in custody and one death of a person whose Indigenous status was unknown.
There have been 547 Indigenous deaths in custody since the Royal Commission.
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.
Cause 1: Ischaemic heart disease
Ischaemic heart disease was the leading single cause of deaths in Australia, responsible for 17,331 deaths in 2021, about one in 10 of total deaths that year. Males were more prone to the disease, accounting for 10,371 (59.8%) of the deaths compared to 6,960 (40.2%) for females.
The colonisation of Australia has caused much trauma among Aboriginal people. Because they couldn't cope with what was happening many developed mental illnesses. The dispossession, loss of identity, loss of land, this has all led to a whole lot of lost people.
Age distribution
The Indigenous population has a relatively young age structure. In 2016, the median age was 23.0 years, compared with 37.8 for non-Indigenous Australians (ABS 2018a).
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 Islander peoples' rights and interests in land are formally recognised over around 50 per cent of Australia's land mass. Connection to land is of central importance to First Nations Australians.
The term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or the person's specific cultural group, is often preferred, though the terms First Nations of Australia, First Peoples of Australia and First Australians are also increasingly common; 812,728 people self-identified as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait ...