Hephzibah Menuhin was a better musician than a sociologist. But a line in one of her books remains with me: that the test of a nation's civility and civilisation is the manner in which it treats its most underprivileged minority. An emotional rather than an empirical measure, perhaps, but it isn't difficult to take her meaning. Who are the most underprivileged? And how does Australia rank?

This paper examines and explains the catastrophic reduction of the Indigenous Australian population. It also looks at disease as a form of genocide, the killing of Indigenous people, forced assimilation, the Stolen Generations, and the apology and acknowledgement.