Dismantling the Australian pygmy people myth

You may have heard this myth before that there was a race of pygmy people who had been on the land that is now called Australia, who were here for several millennia before Aboriginal people, only to have their land stolen and be completely wiped out by Aboriginal people. There is a problem with this story, namely that there is no evidence from the archaeological and biological records that a pygmy population ever existed in Australia or any people prior to Aboriginal people (1). So then why does this myth exist and persist?

The myth is said to come from an outdated theory stemming from the 1930s where a handful of anthropologists said that there were three separate migrations of people onto the Australian continent, with each one eradicating the other, before European people came. Later, some researchers changed the theory and stated that there were two migrations instead of three. More recently, researchers have checked the earlier work and declared that there is only one source population of all known skeletal remains in Australia prior to invasion, and it is Aboriginal people (2)(3).

To coincide with and support this debunked migration theory, some claim there is evidence of a different race of First Peoples around Kuranda and Cairns in Queensland who are smaller in stature and are believed to be pygmies. However, the stature reconstructions for all Pleistocene (period from 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago) fossil humans found in Australia appear to be beyond the average height to be classified as pygmies (4). Additionally, DNA research on human fossils that are 42,000 years old confirm Aboriginal people as the first people in Australia, in effect discrediting these already flawed theories even further (5).

Nevertheless, this myth is pervasive, even though there is insufficient historical or scientific proof, and some state this is because the myth is politically useful (6). As writer Claire Coleman notes “This argument leads inevitably, unless it had started that way, to the statement that the English were merely the most recent arrivals of multiple overlapping invasions.” and “Aboriginal people are not deserving of land-rights because we invaded someone else; the people here before are the one’s deserving of land rights but they are all dead.” (7)

As such, “We all become ‘invaders’; there are no ‘first peoples’, only second- and third-wave Australians”, and therefore the pygmy myth can be used as a way to justify the ongoing invasion of First Nations lands by stating that the British were just stealing land First Nations people stole (8). This could be why the myth not only exists in Australia; there are similar myths existing in other colonised countries as well. For example, there is a myth out there that the Moriori people were in Aotearoa/New Zealand before Maori people who got wiped out and their land stolen by Maori people, even though there is no substantial scientific proof that there were pre-Māori people (9). Similarly, there is also a discredited theory that there was a European population in the American continent before the people now referred to as Native American (10).

Considering this myth, it is important to think about what you hear about First Nations people and culture, especially when receiving the information from non-Indigenous people, before taking it on board as fact. Consider if there is a potential ulterior motivation behind the creation and spreading of this information. Whenever you can, seek First Nations voices when it comes to learning more about First Nations culture, history and people. Myths and propaganda are powerful tools in distorting the truth; they are political weapons that we need to disarm.