Most sources I can find, state that the Aboriginals experienced intentional killings during the white colonisation of Australia. Yet, I have come across a publication called 'The Fabrication of Aboriginal History' by Keith Windshuttle which states that the massacres of the aboriginals were either fake or grossly misinterpreted. So is there any evidence that the Aboriginals had experienced a genocide, or was it an exaggeration?
u/ispeaknoamericano wrote a great answer, and I'm especially happy that they addressed non-violent forms of genocide as well - a community can't survive if you take away most of its children and ban what makes it different. We focus far too much on the invasion, and far too little on the persecution that continued until at least the 1970s. We could also add starvation, diseases, arrests and tribal wars to the genocide - these are not direct murders, but the settlers knew that they had caused them by taking the land, and did nothing to prevent it from continuing or spreading to new areas.
In Australia, part of the problem with the argument around genocide and invasion is that the non-Indigenous public's concept of these events is essentially the Holocaust and WWII. The idea that police and farmers can commit genocide and invade territory seems an alien concept, as does the idea that foster families and education can be evil. Many believe that modern Aboriginal Australians make these narratives up to try and cheat the Australian public - our historians try to convince us that, yes, colonial Australians did all of this, and beyond that, even admitted to it in their diaries and newspapers, and told us why.
The best book I've read on the subject, The Whispering in Our Hearts by Henry Reynolds (one of the historians slandered by Windschuttle), explores the history of white Australians who spoke out against the violence of colonialism. This is such a great read because it explores almost every side of the events - the Aboriginal victims, the white perpetrators, the white colonials who objected, and the colonial authorities who either condoned or condemned it all. It goes from 1788 and the First Fleet to the last massacre in the 1930s, covering each massacre in detail, and ends on the issues around politics and the History Wars (including Windschuttle) today, talking about why Australia began and continues to deny its dark past, how it was hidden, and how it affects Australians today. Reynolds is one of Australia's best historians, and has spent his whole career writing about these topics.
A great example of how genocide was hidden or justified is the Battle of Pinjarra, now recognised as a massacre. Governor of the Swan River Colony (Perth) James Stirling led a revenge raid on a tribe called the Pinjareb near modern Pinjarra, as punishment for these starving people raiding food from (what is now) the Old Mill in South Perth - he wanted to scare all of the Aboriginals of Western Australia by setting a dreadful example, which is the main reason why most of Australia's massacres occurred. Another reason was that his friend, Thomas Peel, wanted to own more Pinjareb land, and they were scaring away workers and colonists. In newspapers and monuments of the time, it was reported that Stirling and his men faced down the tribe's warriors in glorious battle and won. What really happened, as described in their own journals, is that they ambushed the entire tribe at the Murray River - the Pinjareb men tried to buy time for their families to escape across the river before also retreating, when another group of colonials rode up behind them. Together, both groups of Stirling's men shot and killed at least 30 Pinjareb men, women and children who could not fight or flee as they struggled in the river. This tribe was practically destroyed, and the survivors were attacked by its neighbours or forced to beg from white settlers for food and safety. There are still many who say this was a battle for modern political reasons, despite the obvious truth admitted in the perpetrator's diaries.
Lyndall Ryan, another historian attacked by Windschuttle, has spent the last several years mapping Australia's massacres - she is researching in WA this year (I got to meet her). Every dot on the map is full of detail, including all the evidence for the massacres, all the people involved, the reasons why, etc., etc. On the same website she also discusses the debate around massacre in Australia, and what she has learned from massacre and genocide scholarship from elsewhere in the world.
I haven't read Windschuttle, so I'd mostly be repeating what Ispeaknoamericano wrote (which is essentially what other historians think of it), but u/AbandoningAll's post on Windschuttle, linked by u/drylaw, is a really great deconstruction of the issues with Windschuttle's work.
Keith Windschuttle is an amateur historian (at best), who took issue with the term genocide in the Australian context. He did raise some valid points about other historians being sloppy with their footnotes, which Henry Reynolds, a respected historian of Aboriginal history, did acknowledge after the publication of Windschuttle's book. However, his own work has been widely, and quite thoroughly, examined and refuted by a plethora of Australian (academic) historians and public intellectuals such as Stuart MacIntyre, Bain Attwood, and an anthology edited by Professor Robert Manne, called 'Whitewash', was specifically written to address and critique Windschuttle's claims.
The arguments that Windschuttle was making were part of a broader movement in Australia to discredit the histories and lived experiences of Aboriginal people, in favour of upholding a national mythology that Australia had been peacefully settled - it was not.
To sum up, and more directly answer your question about evidence of genocide, I would suggest you turn to some of the historians/academics I listed above. This has been an ongoing debate in Australia, and it is important to note that many Aboriginal people - whether historians, public intellectuals, politicians or otherwise - have argued that genocide is an appropriate descriptor. It is important to remember that violent massacres are not the only markers of genocide, which include cultural destruction (such as language), and child removal - both of which have been experienced by Aboriginal people, largely as direct result of certain government policies in the twentieth century.
Hi,
while waiting for more answers you may be interested in this earlier answer refuting Windschuttle's claims, by /u/AbandoningAll:
And this one, with arguments for why we can clearly talk of a genocide here, including further references and links to the FAQ by /u/djiti-djiti:
Hope this helps