Queensland’s Frontier Killing Times – Facing Up To Genocide

Abstract

Timothy Bottoms’ recent work Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland’s Frontier Killing Times comprehensively documents the systematic killing of thousands of Aboriginal people across the State from the mid-19th until the early 20th century. The record suggests that during this period, significant portions of clan groupings and, in some cases, arguably entire nations of people were slaughtered. The sustained use of State-sanctioned violence via the Queensland Native Police Corps and the consistent pattern of killings raise several questions: Did these acts of violence constitute genocide? If so, who is responsible? What legal and policy avenues are available to address the intergenerational impacts of these unrecognised acts of genocide?