Forrest River Massacre - Accusations of False Claims

Accusations of False Claims

In 1999, journalist Rod Moran published a book Massacre Myth which reviewed the evidence and argued that Gribble had promoted and spread rumours of the alleged massacres and that many of the stories surrounding the events were fabrications by Gribble.

Frontier historian Noel Loos has replied that Moran simply reargued the same case made by the pastoralists' defence lawyer, Walter Nairn, in 1927, believing the police evidence while repeating Nairn's attempt to discredit the evidence and character of the main witness, Ernest Gribble, who had been impugned before the Royal Commission by Walter Nairn, for treating the Aborigines "as the equal of whites,"

Most historians agree with the general conclusions of the Royal Commission, though without committing themselves to a specific number of victims. In 2003 Neville Green wrote: "The guilt or innocence of the police party accused of murder at Forrest River could not be proven in court and cannot be proven now. In The Forrest River Massacres (1995), I tried to show that given the violent history of the Kimberley the massacre was probable."

Read more about this topic:  Forrest River Massacre

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