Indigenous Australians

This Chapter investigates Indigenous (Aboriginal) ‘traditional’ warfare across Australia (including Tasmania) at the time of early Contact. ‘Indigenous Australians’ refer to themselves as ‘People’ of various language groups (e.g. Arunta, Kurnai).¹

Our study examines interactions known as ‘raids’ and ‘battles.’ Violence of a more judicial or domestic nature such as duels, and ‘ordeals’ wherein an accused was publicly speared, will not be addressed. Similarly, Torres Strait warfare not be addressed, on account of its weaponry, objectives and tactics being more akin to other Pacific Islander groups.

Traditional Indigenous warfare ceased being practiced in various regions from 90 to even 150 years ago. This means ‘living’ oral data is scarce, and is carried (and better voiced) by specific communities, fragmented across nodes and networks.² We will concentrate instead on the written record, especially eyewitness and secondhand accounts. There are abundant primary materials from explorers and early settlers, but limited emic sources. As we shall see, this raises issues concerning reliability, given the dominating biases of early authors and the fact that few were sufficiently enculturated to properly understand what they were witnessing. This situation is somewhat remedied by the fact that most witnesses relied on information from Indigenous participants. As a consequence, the issue of correctly interpreting Indigenous warfare remains a key problem, which this chapter addresses.