For the past century or so, the consensus was that before the British invasion of 1788, there were about 300,000 Indigenous people in Australia. It turns out that this number was a wild underestimate—there were, in fact, more than two million people.
According to the team’s column for The Conversation, the old estimate was “largely on observations made after disease, dispossession, and violence had already devastated Indigenous communities.” In a paper published yesterday in Nature Human Behaviour, the team explained how using three methods independent of colonial-era headcounts indicated a median population of 2.22 million Indigenous people in 1788. The findings suggest that Indigenous population losses following British colonization occurred on a much larger scale than previously believed.
“Understanding the size of Indigenous populations in Australia before European invasion in 1788 is essential to truth-telling and reconciliation,” Corey Bradshaw, the study’s co-author and an ecologist at Flinders University in Australia, said in a statement.
Disappointed but frankly not surprised
In its column, the team pointed out the many flaws in previous estimates of Indigenous populations in Australia. To start, the first comprehensive census of Indigenous Australians didn’t occur until 1971. Earlier colonial records were primarily based on the number of people showing up to “blanket distributions and ration depots, living on missions and reserves, or working on pastoral stations.”
People of mixed ancestry were often excluded. And this is even before we start considering how pathogens—smallpox, measles, influenza, and tuberculosis—introduced by British colonists devastated the Indigenous population. Then again, are we really surprised?
“If you’re a frontier farmer, a colonialist that came out to a new area, and you were trying to remove people from ‘your’ land, you’re not going to write extensively about how many people you killed to do that,” Bradshaw told The Guardian. “If there’s a systematic desire to take land [fewer people means a] better justification for imperialism.”
A much-needed update
For the latest investigation, the team took three different approaches, evaluating radiocarbon dates of archaeological samples, genetic reconstruction, and environmental modelling of the carrying capacity of pre-colonial Australian lands. They landed on a median estimate of 2.22 million people, which equates to about 0.29 people per square kilometer. This number is “modest” and consistent with observed densities of Indigenous populations observed after colonial impacts, the team wrote in its column.
The implications of the new estimates are quite grim. Demographic modelling revealed that by 1861—73 years after British arrival—Indigenous populations experienced a 93% decrease, or around 2.06 million deaths in total. The researchers noted that this number is also an estimate, and the range of total deaths is between 700,000 and 4.2 million. Not that this is any better. As the team wrote, “Even the lowest plausible estimate implies catastrophic loss of life on a continental scale.”
Steps to reconciliation
When the British invaded Australia, it justified its actions by asserting terra nullius, or that the land it encroached on belonged to no one. A load of crap? For sure. Does the new estimate further weaken this justification? Again, yes.
“These research findings challenge us to rethink the scale of what happened after 1788,” Larissa Behrendt, who chairs Australia’s Research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures, added in the Flinders statement. “We are not talking about a marginal consequence of colonization but a demographic catastrophe at the heart of the Australian story.”
All that said, the team emphasized that this story, while frustrating and devastating, also paints a tale of survival and resilience. In the end, Indigenous communities “adapted under extraordinary pressure,” preserving their culture, language, and knowledge, the researchers wrote in the column. Facing the scale of an uncomfortable past isn’t to “assign blame but to create shared understanding of our past,” they added.
