Forrest River massacre

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Coordinates	15°12′S 127°51′E / 15.200°S 127.850°E / -15.200; 127.850

The Forrest River massacre (or Oombulgurri massacre) was a massacre of Indigenous Australian people by a group of law enforcement personnel and civilians in June 1926, in the wake of the killing of a pastoralist in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

An initial police inquiry concluded that sixteen Aboriginal people were killed and their remains burnt. Subsequently, a Royal Commission was organised in 1927 to further investigate the matter. This Commission found that eleven Aboriginal people were murdered and burnt at several different locations. Two Western Australian police constables who participated in the punitive expedition that led to the massacre, James St Jack and Denis Regan, were charged with murder and arrested. Despite the findings of the commission and police investigation, the case never went to trial, with a preliminary hearing concluding that a jury would not be able to make a conviction. Lumbia, the Aboriginal man who killed the pastoralist Frederick Hay, was, however, convicted in a separate proceeding. The total number of victims of the punitive expedition led by St Jack and Regan is unclear, the highest being in the hundreds given by the brother of one of the participants in the massacre. The authoritative website Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930, notes that the latter figure 'is highly unlikely and is in dispute'.^[1]

Regardless of official police and governmental investigations concluding that a large number of people were killed during the police operation, denials of this massacre continued until at least the early 2000s.