ABSTRACT
Colonisation throughout Australia was based on the dispossession of Indigenous people from their lands, without treaty or lawful settlement, and achieved through means that included the widespread incarceration of Indigenous people whose resistance was met with brutal force (Short, 2016; Dwyer & Ryan, 2016; Nettelbeck & Ryan, 2018). Massacres of men, women and children by colonial governments and others were known to have occurred across the country during frontier times (Ryan et al., 2017) and this historical knowledge of genocide and settler-violence is only growing (Brennan, 2018). The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples, citing research from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, states:
During colonization, Aboriginal Australians were murdered, raped and enslaved for forced labour. Massacres occurred across Australia and, in the course of frontier conflict, it is estimated that about 2,000 British colonizers and over 20,000 indigenous Australians suffered violent deaths.
(Human Rights Council, 2017, p. 3)