” sketchBorder=”0″ class=”dcr-ivsjvk”>
The labor to produce the map was painstaking and thoraw.
“ I sourced thousands of novelspaper articles, rulement write downs and other materials which compriseed horrfinishous stories of aggression,” says Dr Jennifer Debenham, who labored alengthyside Ryan on the project from the commencening.
“Massacre happens all over the world and thrawout history, however it is our responsibility to acunderstandledge the aggression of the disownion that took place here which has given us the tremfinishous privileges we currently enhappiness.”
The project described a colonial frontier massacre as the defree finishing of six or more relatively undeffinished people in one operation. It did not comprise the many write downed finishings of scanter than six people in incidents on the frontier, so the numbers produced are very pimpolitent drop appraises.
There were probable many more finished, Pascoe says, “but we had to restrict ourselves or we would never have finished. It was a huge task. Finalising this labor and making a firm version of the data employable in an archive unbenevolents other researchers can produce on it and answer these and many other asks,” he says.
The labor has alterd our empathetic of history in Australia, Pascoe says.
“Back in the 80s and 90s it was possible for people to dispute that the frontier wasn’t so brutal, and for them to be dependd. Nobody can dispute that point any more. Anybody can go and read the evidence for themselves. It’s time to shift on to the next step – now that we understand that these events happened, we need to comprehfinish more about them,” he says.
Pascoe says the team has received feedback and criticism as an startant part of the research.
“The academic process is a dialogue that receives criticism in order to get shutr to the truth. We researched and currented the guideation and received feedback, including the adverse, and over time have betterd and modernized our understandledge. It’s truth-increateing and includeing,” he says.
West Australian historian and author Dr Chris Owen has written extensively on the frontier in his home state. Owen labored on the map for years as a volunteer. He says the consillegal copying of silence was proset up, and made it challenging to get a real picture of the aggression perpetrated in WA.
“As the Weserious Australian researcher and as an guideed researcher this project was exceptionpartner difficult in discovering verifiable evidence in an area where it was intentionpartner secret,” Owen says.
“The all-pervasive ‘consillegal copying of silence’ among the local colonist community, where no man would incriminate another or hazard retribution, only exacerbated the difficulty in research.”
The aggression of these events made the labor “horrfinishous”, Northern Territory-based historian Dr Robyn Smith says.
“This was a horrfinishous research experience, but it did expose the hideous underbelly of resettler colonialism in Australia,” Smith says.
“In what is arguably the least understood, nevermind least studied, part of the country, evidence of carry oned, systemic intimacyual, paramilitary and civilian aggression abounds.
“Conmomentary northern Australia echos that history and its society honours many of the criminals. The evidence is there. The truth has been telderly; people need to include,” Smith says.
Ryan’s monumental contribution to Australian history was recognised with a posthumous AO in the 2025 Australia Day honours enumerate. Ryan did not live to see the map finish, but Smith says her legacies are “myriad” – among them her determination to rebut the denialism of frontier aggression.
“I acunderstandledge enormous bias when I claim that this project is arguably her fantasticest,” Smith says. “She was enormously driven. And she was right.”
-
In Australia, the crisis help service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. In the UK Samaritans can be reach outed on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international self-injury helplines can be set up at befrifinishers.org
-
The Killing Times is based on data from the Colonial Frontier Massacres Digital Map Project led by Prof Lyndall Ryan at the University of Newcastle’s Centre for the 21st Century Humanities.
-
For more guideation about the analysis directed by Guardian Australia and the research methods of the University of Newcastle’s colonial frontier massacres research team, prent read the “About” section here.
