List Of Massacres Of Indigenous Australians
The list below is a yet unfinished attempt to list some of the better documented massacres of Aboriginal Australians which took place mainly during the colonial period.
Any such events were generally not recorded but veiled in secrecy due to fear of possible legal consequences, especially following the Myall Creek Massacre in 1838. Recent studies reveal that many conflict records from the Australian Frontier, notably those of Queensland and its Native Police Force, were deliberately expunged sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. It is generally acknowledged that the European as well as indigenous death toll in frontier conflicts and massacres in Queensland exceeded that of all other Australian colonies, yet it is certainly not possible to map out more than a small percentage of the numerous massacre sites in Queensland. We can calculate in various ways the minimum amount of frontier 'dispersals' performed by the Native Police Force (as was indeed done recently by Dr Raymond Evans based on a small portion of monthly native police summaries of now lost 'collision reports' stored in the archives) the approximate amount dispersals performed by the native police during half a century. However, we will never be able to locate or describe in detail more than a small percentage of these events. Thus any attempt to list all events of this nature will of nature (at least in Queensland), be more deceptive than revealing.
The concepts of invasion, frontier wars and massacres, although frequently mentioned and debated in the early Australian legislatures, has become a highly contentious issues in modern Australia. For discussion of the historical arguments about these conflicts, see the articles on the History Wars and in particular the section on the 'black armband' view of history, plus the section on impact of European settlement in the article on Indigenous Australians.
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Read more about List Of Massacres Of Indigenous Australians: 1700s, 1800s, 1900s
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