Map of 250 indigenous massacres reveals Australia's violent past

An online map which has so far documented 250 massacres of indigenous peoples after Australia was colonised by the British is set to be expanded, researchers said today, as they seek to uncover the country's dark past.

The native Aboriginal population, who have occupied Australia for 50,000 years, were dispossessed of their lands by the arrival of settlers two centuries ago.

As the colonisers pushed into the vast interior of the island continent, historians said they were resisted by the local population, and thousands of men, women and children were killed.

"It wasn't until I started to do this project that I realised how widespread frontier massacres were in Australia," indigenous historian Lyndall Ryan of the University of Newcastle told AFP.

"It is beginning to overturn how we think about the past. There's been a shift in consciousness in Australians and they are ready now to know and understand what happened."
"I think engaging people in the process helps to overcome that. We are providing the evidence now of a very major change in the way in which we look at the past."