Impact of colonisation on First Nations people far greater than previous estimates, research finds

Australia's Indigenous population was up to seven times larger before colonisation than previously estimated, but was devastated following the arrival of Europeans, new research reveals.

Researchers from across Australia say their findings paint a more accurate picture of the impact of colonisation on First Nations people, updating previous population estimates calculated using anthropological information gathered in the 1930s.

In a research paper published on Tuesday evening, the researchers estimated Australia's median pre-colonial Indigenous population was 2.22 million people — significantly higher than previous estimates of between 250,000 to 1 million people.

But according to the new research, an estimated 2.06 million First Nations Australians were likely to have died from diseases, massacres and mortality associated with displacement and other colonial-related disturbances to Indigenous ways of life over the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Just over 70 years after the First Fleet landed in Australia in 1788, only seven per cent of Australia's pre-colonial population was estimated to have survived.

The researchers used computer modelling and reviewed ethnographic observations and archaeological and genetic reconstructions to calculate the revised estimates.

"These research findings challenge us to rethink the scale of what happened after 1788," University of Technology Sydney professor and Eualayai/Gamillaroi woman Larissa Behrendt said.

"We are not talking about a marginal consequence of colonisation, but a demographic catastrophe at the heart of the Australian story."

Lethal disease, frontier violence decimated Indigenous population

Report co-author and Flinders University global ecology professor Corey Bradshaw said he found it "unsurprising" that it had taken until now to form a more accurate picture of Australia's pre-colonial Indigenous population, given historical biases and racism towards First Nations people.

He said previous studies underestimated the impact of lethal diseases and frontier and structural violence on the population.

"Aboriginal people were considered fauna under our Wildlife Act as late as the 1970s, the first official census of Aboriginal people in Aboriginal in 1971, so it hasn't been that long that we've woken up to the fact these travesties occurred," he said.

Professor Bradshaw said smallpox alone could have killed up to 220,000 First Nations people along the country's east coast within the first 10 years of colonisation.

He said while some massacres were recorded in databases, the information represented "only the tip of the iceberg".

"Probably most of the frontier violence was done under the cover of night, so to speak," he said.

"We expect that the recorded massacres are probably out by an order of magnitude of what was actually happening."

Research important to truth-telling and reconciliation 

Australia's First Nations population has grown since the 1950s, with latest census data showing in 2021, it was at about 37 per cent of the estimated median pre-colonial size.

Researchers estimate that achieving parity with the 1788 pre-colonial population would not be reached until 2047, if current growth trends continue.

In their paper, the researchers wrote that estimating the size of Australia's Indigenous population prior to colonisation was "invaluable to truth-telling and reconciliation".

"Removing 93 per cent of the (Indigenous) population in 70 years, it can't be interpreted in any other way but disastrous," Professor Bradshaw said.

"On the flip side, these Indigenous cultures survived and these people, despite all that horrendous treatment and dispossession and death, managed to perpetuate their languages, their culture, their managing of country and that is worth celebrating."