List of massacres of Indigenous Australians
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Colonial settlers frequently clashed with Indigenous people (on continental Australia) during and after the wave of mass immigration of Europeans into the continent, which began in the late 18th century and lasted until the early 20th. Throughout this period, settlers attacked and displaced Indigenous Australians, resulting in significant numbers of Indigenous deaths. These attacks are considered to be a direct and indirect (through displacement and hunger) cause of the decline of the Indigenous population, during an ongoing colonising process of mass immigration and land clearing for agricultural and mining purposes.
There are over 400 known massacres of Indigenous people on the continent. A project headed by historian Lyndall Ryan from the University of Newcastle and funded by the Australian Research Council has been researching and mapping the sites of these massacres. A massacre is defined as "the deliberate and unlawful killing of six or more undefended people in one operation", and an interactive map has been developed. As of October 2024, the number of documented massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by colonists recorded as having taken place in the period between 1788 and 1930 was 417 (10,372 individuals), while there were 13 massacres of colonists by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people in the same period (160 individuals).
There are also at least 26 recorded instances of mass poisonings of Aboriginal Australians.
The following list tallies some of the massacres (as defined above) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by colonial authorities and settlers (or their descendants), most of which took place during the mass-immigration period.
1790s – 1890s
New South Wales
1790s
September 1794.
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