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.
Initial invasion and colonisation (1788 to 1890) The arrival of Lieutenant James Cook, and then Arthur Phillip in 1788, marked the beginning of 'white settlement'. From 1788, Australia was treated by the British as a colony of settlement, not of conquest.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On 27 May 1967, Australians voted to change the Constitution so that like all other Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be counted as part of the population and the Commonwealth would be able to make laws for them.
The Waterloo Creek massacre, also known as the Australia Day massacre.
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 initial reaction of Australia's Indigenous people towards the British was confrontational. The Indigenous people did not know who the British people were and so they reacted with aggression in an attempt to make them leave, so as to protect their land.
Some of the Eora—the Aboriginal peoples of the Sydney area—welcomed the newcomers. The leader of the British colony, Arthur Phillip, directed the colonists to treat the Aboriginal peoples respectfully.
The British did not believe in racial equality and considered the aboriginals to be primitive and backwards. They signed unfair treaties or pushed aboriginals off their land with force to take up the best land for farming and urban development.
For more than 50,000 years before European arrival, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples lived as hunter-gatherers. With no signs of land ownership, such as fences, crops, stock animals, or buildings, the Europeans who arrived on the First Fleet believed the land was free to claim.
Woollarawarre Bennelong was the first Aboriginal man to visit Europe and return. He was born on the south shore of the Parramatta River around 1764. In late November 1789, Governor Arthur Phillip had orders from King George III to use “every possible means” to open dialogue with the natives.
Whilst the reactions of the Aboriginal inhabitants to the sudden invasion by the British were varied, they became hostile when their presence led to competition over resources, and to the occupation of their lands.
The National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972 (SA) authorises hunting by Aboriginal persons outside reserves and wilderness protection areas which would otherwise be illegal under the Act. The Living Marine Resources Management Act 1995 (Tas) creates in s 60 an offence of fishing without a licence in state waters.
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.
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.
In its report, delivered late in 1961, the committee estimated that about 30,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had been denied the vote as a result of discriminatory legislation in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland.
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.
On 26 January 1988, more than 40,000 people, including Indigenous Australians from across the country, staged the largest march in Sydney since the early 1970s Vietnam Moratorium demonstrations. The protesters marched through Sydney chanting for land rights.
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.
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'.
It is happening today. While the intent of child removal today may be different to that experienced by the Stolen Generations, the effect is the same: a loss of identity and the exacerbation of intergenerational trauma.