Mass poisonings of Aboriginal Australians

Numerous recorded instances of mass poisonings of Aboriginal Australians occurred during the British colonisation of Australia. The desire to remove Aboriginal people from the land and the want to neutralise Aboriginal resistance led colonists to look for ways to kill or drive Aboriginal people away. Typical methods of achieving this involved punitive expeditions and massacres through the use of guns and other weaponry. Occasionally mass-poisoning was also used as a method.

Poisoned consumables, such as flour, was either knowingly given out to groups of Aboriginal people, or purposely left in accessible places where they were taken away and eaten collectively by the local clans. Subsequently, incidents of deaths of Aboriginal people due to the consumption of deliberately poisoned substances occurred throughout the decades, and in many different locations of Australia.

There are some notable documented cases of poisonings involving investigations by police and government, as well as legal proceedings. The onset of mass-poisoning as a method of killing Aboriginal people coincided with the introduction, from the 1820s onwards, of toxic substances used in the sheep farming industry. Chemicals such as arsenic, strychnine, corrosive sublimate, aconitum and prussic acid were involved.