Australia’s Indigenous population estimated at 2.2m before ‘demographic catastrophe’ of colonisation
Guardian AU
•Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:00:31 GMT
📰 What Happened
New peer-reviewed research published in Nature Human Behaviour by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures estimates that 2.2 million Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people lived in Australia before the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet, far above early estimates of around 250,000. The modelling also puts excess deaths between 1788 and 1861 at 2.06 million, implying the population fell to roughly 7 per cent of its original size. Co-author Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University said the numbers require millions of excess deaths from smallpox and other diseases, massacres, dispossession and malnutrition, and noted his earlier research found an 1789 smallpox outbreak alone killed as many as 220,000 Aboriginal people. The team used archaeological records, reconstructions of climate and land productivity, and genetic data based on known mutation rates, and reviewed ethnographic estimates without relying on them. Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt, who chairs the centre's advisory committee, described the result as a demographic catastrophe at the heart of the Australian story, and distinguished Professor Lynette Russell of Monash University said the findings should inform understanding of intergenerational trauma and future policy.
🔍 The Backstory
Estimates of pre-colonial population have been contested for decades. Governor Arthur Phillip gauged the Gadigal people of the Eora nation at about 1,500, and the first continent-wide figure, from social anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, put the total at 250,000 to 300,000 using observations largely gathered after colonisation had already taken effect. Radcliffe-Brown knew his number was an undercount, but later researchers often used it as a baseline; economic historian Noel Butlin proposed around 900,000 in 1983 and later raised it to between 1.1 million and 1.3 million, while archaeologists John Mulvaney and J Peter White argued for 750,000 in 1987. Australia was colonised on the legal fiction of terra nullius, which the High Court overturned in the Mabo decision, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not properly counted in the census until 1971, when 115,953 people were recorded; the 2021 census counted 812,728, revised upward to 983,257.
🎯 Why It Matters
The study gives one of the most rigorous published estimates yet of the scale of death and dispossession that followed colonisation, which is directly relevant to truth-telling, treaty processes and reconciliation debates. The authors argue the findings should shape policy for Indigenous Australians still living with intergenerational trauma, and they warn readers the material is confronting. The research also supplies a demographic frame that historians of frontier violence and disease have been working towards for decades, with Bradshaw suggesting massacre records themselves may be undercounted by an order of magnitude. What happens next is academic scrutiny of the methods, followed by debate over how the findings are used in education, commemoration and policy.
New peer-reviewed research published in Nature Human Behaviour by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures estimates that 2.2 million Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people lived in Australia before the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet, far above early estimates of around 250,000. The modelling also puts excess deaths between 1788 and 1861 at 2.06 million, implying the population fell to roughly 7 per cent of its original size. Co-author Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University said the numbers require millions of excess deaths from smallpox and other diseases, massacres, dispossession and malnutrition, and noted his earlier research found an 1789 smallpox outbreak alone killed as many as 220,000 Aboriginal people. The team used archaeological records, reconstructions of climate and land productivity, and genetic data based on known mutation rates, and reviewed ethnographic estimates without relying on them. Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt, who chairs the centre's advisory committee, described the result as a demographic catastrophe at the heart of the Australian story, and distinguished Professor Lynette Russell of Monash University said the findings should inform understanding of intergenerational trauma and future policy.
Estimates of pre-colonial population have been contested for decades. Governor Arthur Phillip gauged the Gadigal people of the Eora nation at about 1,500, and the first continent-wide figure, from social anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, put the total at 250,000 to 300,000 using observations largely gathered after colonisation had already taken effect. Radcliffe-Brown knew his number was an undercount, but later researchers often used it as a baseline; economic historian Noel Butlin proposed around 900,000 in 1983 and later raised it to between 1.1 million and 1.3 million, while archaeologists John Mulvaney and J Peter White argued for 750,000 in 1987. Australia was colonised on the legal fiction of terra nullius, which the High Court overturned in the Mabo decision, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not properly counted in the census until 1971, when 115,953 people were recorded; the 2021 census counted 812,728, revised upward to 983,257.
The study gives one of the most rigorous published estimates yet of the scale of death and dispossession that followed colonisation, which is directly relevant to truth-telling, treaty processes and reconciliation debates. The authors argue the findings should shape policy for Indigenous Australians still living with intergenerational trauma, and they warn readers the material is confronting. The research also supplies a demographic frame that historians of frontier violence and disease have been working towards for decades, with Bradshaw suggesting massacre records themselves may be undercounted by an order of magnitude. What happens next is academic scrutiny of the methods, followed by debate over how the findings are used in education, commemoration and policy.