How a 100-year-old population estimate may have got Australia wrong

How many people lived in Australia before colonisation? For nearly a century, many answers to that question have been influenced by a figure developed by anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, who estimated the population at 250,000.

But new research from a national team of academics suggests there could have been about 2.2 million Indigenous Australians living on the continent before the British colonisation in 1788.

Based on the revised population figure and comparisons with early Census records, researchers estimate the Indigenous population declined by more than two million people between 1788 and 1861.

Corey Bradshaw, a professor of global ecology at Flinders University who co-led the research, told SBS News the findings illustrate the magnitude of the demographic collapse experienced by Indigenous Australians.

Researchers believe the decline was likely driven by a combination of introduced diseases, frontier violence, malnutrition, dispossession and other impacts of colonisation.

"We're now starting to look at things like the massacres and try to de-bias a lot of that as well, because of course that's only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what was recorded," Bradshaw said.

The team relied on three independent approaches — archaeological, genetic and environmental modelling — rather than relying primarily on historical accounts.

Bradshaw said the approach is less vulnerable to the biases and gaps in historical records, and each of the three methods produced a relatively congruent set of estimates.

The 1930 estimate of roughly 250,000, Bradshaw said, was developed at a time when researchers lacked access to modern tools.

He said its creator acknowledged it was likely an underestimate, but the figure became widely accepted despite its limitations.

Other historical estimates suggested the population of Indigenous Australians may have been up to one million people, still under half of what the new research suggests.

'It's something we have to acknowledge'

Bradshaw said understanding the size of Indigenous populations before colonisation was essential to truth-telling and reconciliation.

"It's something that we have to acknowledge in our history and not sweep under the carpet," he said.

"It's part of understanding why the gap still exists in many aspects of society, and how to address it, and how long we might expect things to take to realign. I mean, these are huge demographic catastrophes that affected people for generations and generations."

The Indigenous population in Australia has grown since the 1950s, and represented 3.2 per cent of the overall population at the time of the 2021 Census at just under 813,000 people.

At current growth rates, the study estimates the Indigenous population will not return to its estimated pre-colonial size until around 2047.

Lynette Russell is a professor of Indigenous studies at Monash University's Indigenous Studies Centre and a co-author of the report.

She said the findings bring a heightened understanding of intergenerational trauma that can inform future policy that helps Indigenous people.

"In addition to recognising this intergenerational trauma and disadvantage, it is also time to recognise intergenerational privilege," she said.

Bradshaw said the work also illustrates the resilience of Indigenous communities.

"It is remarkable that we have the variation and diversity of Indigenous cultures and languages and approaches to managing country that survived that catastrophe," he said.

More than 100 First Nations languages are still spoken across Australia, though some are in serious danger of being lost.

"We should celebrate the fact that these people were very resilient, and in face of all of that persecution, managed to persist."

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