They are the most recent wars to have been fought on our home soil, yet the conflicts from the European invasion of Australia are not recognised on a national day.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
There is currently a call to acknowledge the land’s original people who were killed during the colonisation of Australia with a national day of remembrance and a monument erected on Canberra’s Anzac Parade.
This movement has its supporters – the sixth annual Frontier Wars march was held on Anzac Parade on April 25 to honour those original people killed during the colonisation.
It has been estimated around 300,000 Indigenous Australians were living in the country in 1788, but by the 1920s census figures indicated only about 58,000 “full-blood” Indigenous people survived.
Using conservative figures such as these – other researchers have thought over one million Indigenous people lived in Australia towards the end of the 18th Century – it can be estimated the Indigenous population of Australia declined about 80 per cent after the European invasion.
In his book The Other Side Of The Frontier, Henry Reynolds very conservatively estimated at least 20,000 Indigenous Australians were killed as a direct result of conflict with the European settlers – with the secondary effects of invasion such as spread of disease and disruption being responsible for further deaths – while about 2000 non-Indigenous people were killed by the land’s original inhabitants.
However this number is far from conclusive – in 2014 researchers estimated 66,000 Indigenous Australians were killed in Queensland alone.
Compare this to the 60,284 Australians who died during the First World War.
These numbers are similar, but the Australians who died in WW1 enlisted and fought on foreign lands while the Indigenous Australians in Queensland included male and female civilians killed on their home soil.
In no way should the sacrifice of the Anzacs be forgotten. They gave up their lives so we could have the peace and security that we do today.
But a separate national day could honour the thousands of original Australians killed in wars with Europeans.
No longer should we ignore the part of our history where foreigners came to this land in boats and killed the civilians who inhabited these shores.
