Why the number of Indigenous deaths in the frontier wars matters

Precisely how many Indigenous Australians died in the frontier wars that raged across the continent after European occupation in 1788?

When writing about the issue, I have consistently used the figure of 20,000 Indigenous Australians and about 2,000 colonial soldiers, police and settlers. I’ve said this a conservative estimate, based largely on the academic research of Henry Reynolds, John Connor and others.

That figure – translating to about 10 Indigenous deaths for each European killed – has been hotly contested by conservative historians, but new collaborative academic research credibly suggests that the real frontier war fatality figure could be at least three times greater, and that the ratio of black to white deaths could be 44 to one.

We will never know for certain. The documentation needed to determine an exact figure – be it 100,000, 60,000, 20,000 or, as many conservative historians insist, far fewer – either never existed or has been destroyed, wilfully or accidentally.

Certainly the stories of massacres of Indigenous Australians are everywhere in the archives of the major cultural institutions of Australia and Great Britain. The diaries, letters, journals and memoirs of colonial and postcolonial officials, troops, police, farmers, frontiersmen and women are replete with accounts of fights against – and massacres of – the “marauding blacks”.

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The frontier war, they say, was “our Great War – a war for both the defense and conquest of Australia”.

In the countdown to the centenary of Anzac this proposition might pose troubling questions for those who view this country’s contribution to world war one as an expression of uniquely Australian values. Such as: what did the other war say about the real genesis of Australian nationhood?

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Guardian