This is what happened in 1926 in WA !
The 1926 Forrest River massacre in the North Kimberley Oombulgurri district. This massacre through June and July 1926 was one of the last well known large scale killing and subsequent burnings of Aboriginal people in Australia.After Aboriginal man Lumbia had killed a white bloke (later found out because he had raped his wife) thirteen men led by two police officers James St Jack and Dennis Regan went on a six week expedition armed with .44 caliber rifles and over 500 rounds of ammunition.
Here anywhere between 11 and over 100 Aboriginal people were killed and their bodies incinerated. Stories of this event soon circulated through the district and Aboriginal locals informed the determined missionary Reverend Ernest Gribble who reported the event to authorities creating national and international headlines. This forced the WA government (which already had a poor reputation due to the earlier ‘Killing times’
to call yet another Royal Commission. Chaired by George Wood its eye watering title was: 'Royal Commission of Inquiry into Alleged Killing and Burning of Bodies of Aborigines in East Kimberley and into Police Methods when Effecting Arrests’. [Link to report in comments.]In the report senior police themselves such as Inspector Douglas gave evidence that ‘sixteen natives were burned in three lots: one, six and nine.’[p.67] Commissioner Wood reduced this figure and found that eleven people had been murdered and their remains burnt. Aboriginal eye witnesses to the event who were due to give evidence to Wood mysteriously disappeared (believed murdered to keep them quiet).
One punitive expedition member confronted Gribble in Wyndham saying: ‘If ever I catch you on my tracks in any nigger business I will put a bullet in you.’[p.5] Wood noted that the ‘conspiracy of silence’ around the massacre was so extensive that it included ‘the entire European community of Wyndham and all associated pastoral holdings in the district’. [p.vi] The two police officers Regan and St Jack were the only members of the expedition charged with murder, though with the absence of eyewitness testimony, a magistrate found the evidence insufficient to go to trial and they were released and reinstated. Lumbia on the other hand was convicted of murder and received life in prison. Despite the overwhelming evidence this massacre is disputed to this day with some writing entire books denouncing the entire event as a ‘myth'. There is little doubt this massacre occurred. It is fully consistent with accounts and practices established some 40 years earlier: a general policy of pacification to instill terror; payback for stock or horse loss; killing or threatening to kill a colonist; and access to Aboriginal women.So what do Aboriginal oral history accounts say of this event?
This horrifying account below recorded in 1986 of a child Lily Johnson reveals more than most would find comfortable:
