List of massacres of Indigenous Australians

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.^[1]

There are over 400 known massacres of Indigenous people on the continent.^[2][3][4] There are at least 26 recorded instances of mass poisonings of Aboriginal Australians.^[5][6][7][8]

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.^[9] 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.^[5][10][6] As of 16 November 2021^[update], an estimated 304 massacres had been recorded as having taken place in the period between 1788 and 1930.^[6] As of 2022 the number of documented massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had risen to 412.^[11]

The following list tallies some of the massacres 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.