The aim of much recent writing on alleged frontier massacres appears to be the conjuring of as many murdered Aborigines as possible. With its errors, omissions and disconcerting semi-novelistic approach to the events and non-events at Forrest River, Professor Kate Auty’s book is another example of that movement. That it has been blessed with the imprimatur of a university press makes this sorry work all the more depressing
In the Northern Territory, fatalities by law enforcement is part of an historic cycle of policing in the north which includes police reprisal and then acquittal for murder.