Sins of the Fathers: The Legacy of Frontier Violence on Australian Communities

Abstract

In April 2024, three weeks of curfew brought the world’s attention to the social problems of the Australian Outback town of Alice Springs. ‘Alice’, like many regional and remote towns, has a dark colonial history of land theft and massacre of Indigenous peoples. Yet Australians resist the idea that today’s community problems originate from their past and that truth-telling can make a difference. In this study, we explore the need for truth-telling by undertaking the first quantitative study of the link between contemporary community outcomes and historical massacres, defined as the deliberate killing of 6 or more undefended people in one operation. To do this, we build community-level data on: over 400 verified massacre sites of Indigenous people (1788-1930), historical composition of settler populations, locations of historical institutions (missions, reserves, stations and prisons), geography (e.g. rainfall, topography, rivers, soil types) and contemporary outcomes. Using regression to adjust for historical populations and geographical confounders, our preliminary analysis suggests that communities affected by massacres have higher historical rates of Indigenous institutionalisation, are more segregated by race, are more likely to oppose Indigenous self-determination, measured by the proportion who voted “no” in the 2023 referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament, and display higher levels of intra-racial social capital. Future analysis will examine discrimination as a measure of inter-racial social capital and the possibility of IV estimation to complement existing results, particularly the use of historical droughts at time of settlement as an instrument for massacre.