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“Forms of Engagement”: the Varied Responses of Black Diggers on Their Return to White Australia

Les diverses formes d'engagement des « Black Diggers » – les soldats Aborigènes – lors de leur retour à une Australie « blanche »
Elizabeth Rechniewski

Résumés

Des milliers de soldats indigènes ont été enrôlés dans les armées impériales pendant la Première Guerre mondiale. D’autres se sont engagés volontairement, bien qu’il leur fût interdit de servir, comme c’était le cas des « Black Diggers » – les soldats d’origine Aborigène – en Australie. Cet article rend compte de l’expérience de ces soldats lors de leur retour en Australie, quand ils se sont retrouvés face à la même discrimination qu’avant-guerre – ségrégation et résidence surveillée, absence de droits politiques et sociaux – tandis que la situation des communautés Aborigènes dans leur ensemble tendait à se détériorer. Le contexte était peu propice à toute intervention de la part des vétérans au nom de leurs propres intérêts ou ceux de leurs communautés : la Constitution de l’Australie qui a inscrit la hiérarchie raciale dans les documents fondateurs de la nouvelle nation ; l’expérience particulière des soldats pendant leur service militaire ; les théories répandues autour des caractéristiques de la population autochtone et de son statut de « race condamnée à disparaître » ; et les solutions proposées pour résoudre le « problème des autochtones » et des « métis », tous ces facteurs ont largement limité l’espace discursif et politique dans lequel ils pouvaient opérer. L’article s’appuie sur des articles de presse, des lettres de vétérans envoyées aux journaux, des archives biographiques et des publications émises par des organisations Aborigènes, afin d’illustrer les diverses formes d’engagement social et politique que certains des anciens combattants ont néanmoins poursuivies.

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Texte intégral

  • 1 Noah Riseman, Defending Whose Country. Indigenous Soldiers in the Pacific War, Lincoln: (...)

1During World War One many thousands of Indigenous men from the British and French empires were recruited for the war effort, whether to work in support services or to fight on the frontline. Their participation was often represented, at the time and since, suggests Noah Riseman, as an “encouraging example of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working together” that became incorporated in the myth of a “common heritage.”1 On their return from war, however, the colonial soldiers often faced the same, if not enhanced, discrimination as in the past and usually did not receive the allowances and entitlements given to the European soldiers.

  • 2 First World War Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (2019). Special issue: Colonial Veterans of WWI.
  • 3 Although a few Torres Strait IsIander soldiers served in World War One, post-war discussion a (...)

2Disappointed expectations and the disruptive impact of recruitment and service fostered multiple and varied forms of post-war resistance to colonial rule, from civil campaigns to nationalist rebellion. A recent volume has illustrated the range of responses across the empires.2 The aim of this article is to explore the political and social role that returned Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander soldiers (the “Black Diggers”) played as they returned to civilian life in post-war Australian society, in the context of their experience of recruitment and service and the reception that awaited them on their return.3 It argues that the particular constitution of Australia, where racial hierarchy and white superiority were enshrined in the founding documents of the nation, prevalent theories around the characteristics of the Indigenous populations and their status as a “doomed race”, and the solutions put forward to solve the “Aboriginal and ‘half-caste’ problem,” largely constrained the discursive and political space within which they could operate.

A White Army for a White Australia

3On the Federation of Australia in 1901, the question of the defence of this vast continent became a pressing issue, the more so because the rapidly evolving geopolitical situation was adding to the fears of invasion that had, since the late nineteenth century, preoccupied Australian politicians and, in periods of crisis, the press and public as well. A rapid succession of events: the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905; the alliance between Britain and Japan that was supposedly the guarantee of Australia’s security in the Pacific; Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910; the awareness of the teeming millions in Japan and China that might seek room to expand, had combined to create disquiet and direct the attention of the new Federal parliament towards the issue of defence.

  • 4 Peter Cochrane, Best We Forget. The War for White Australia, 1914-1918, Melbourne: Text (...)
  • 5 Cochrane, Best We Forget, op. cit., 24; Brigid Hains, The Ice and the Inland. Mawson, Flynn (...)

4Moreover, the Federation had a mission and a raison d’être: the preservation of Australia as a home exclusively for the white race, a racial oasis in a region dominated by “black”, “brown” and Asian populations. This key policy prompted the passage in the first sessions of the Federal parliament of Acts to expel from the land the “alien” populations that had come or been brought to work in Australia, ­notably the Chinese and the Kanakas, and Immigration legislation that would exclude any new foreign elements from gaining admission. Prime Minister Alfred Deakin asserted in 1905 that until white Australians had a national defence force they were only “tenants in the continent” and as such could be easily evicted from it.4 The “Empty North” was considered particularly vulnerable because of its low (white) population density: the Federal takeover of the Northern Territory from South Australia by the Fisher Labour government in 1911 was intended to protect the territory from foreign incursion and ensure that it would be settled and developed for the white race.5

  • 6 Cochrane, Best We Forget, op. cit., 9.

5When the Defence minister Joseph Cook introduced the defence bill into parliament in September 1909, he observed that hitherto Australia had relied on Britain for her security but the current situation called for change. They could not solely rely, he said, on continuing support from Britain which did not have the same racial ideals and could not or would not prevent coloured labour entering their country; nor could they count on Britain to protect them from those surrounding nations “hungering for room and breathing space.”6 A compulsory training scheme for young men would build up a national army; he noted that it would be a white army: in the defence of white Australia there would be no place for non-whites. The Defence Act of 1909 therefore exempted: “Those who are not substantially of European origin or descent, of which the medical authorities appointed in that behalf under the regulations shall be the judges.”

6The policy of excluding foreign elements applied also to those internal populations that had no place in a white Australia, the Indigenous peoples. The new Federal government passed a series of measures that excluded them from the rights and benefits of citizenship in the new nation. Aboriginal people of both sexes were expressly denied the Federal vote by the 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act, except in those States where they had already enjoyed the franchise under earlier colonial legislation: Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania. It thus effectively denied political rights to the great majority of Indigenous peoples since their largest populations lived in Queensland, the Northern Territory and West Australia. The Invalid and Old Age Pension Act of 1908 excluded from its provisions “Aboriginal Natives of Australia” and Aboriginal mothers were explicitly denied the maternity allowance introduced in 1912. Aboriginal people came under the jurisdiction of the States, except in the Northern Territory, and were increasingly confined on mission stations and reserves under the control of the State Protection Boards.

The Recruitment and Service of Black Diggers

  • 7 Jake Evans, “Indigenous Soldiers’ Stories of Pride, Pain after World Wars told in the Facin (...)

7Despite the structural discrimination to which they were subject and their explicit exclusion from the armed forces, when World War One began, hundreds of Aboriginal men enlisted and others tried to do so but were turned away. The number of Black Diggers in the army has recently been calculated as over thirteen hundred men—the Australian War Museum has established a nominative list of these men and the details of their service—though the true number will never be known since no official record was kept of their race. Their motives were no doubt mixed, as were those of the white volunteers, but the Black Diggers had the added incentive of escape from the confines of the mission station and pay far in excess of their normal wages.7

  • 8 Elizabeth Rechniewski, “Resénégalisation and the Representation of Black African Troops dur (...)

8There were significant differences between Black Diggers’ service and that of other colonial soldiers enrolled in support of Britain or France. The latter were usually the object of targeted recruitment by the colonial authorities through some kind of inducement or enforcement. They often served in units together and could therefore be the object of many forms of discrimination, in pay and conditions, in discipline and accommodation. Measures might be taken to segregate them as far as possible from civilian populations, during rest leave for example, in order to limit their exposure to the destabilising influences of white society.8 The soldiers might nevertheless be influenced by the more informal nature of certain social contacts with white people and exposure to the evident inconsistencies between the representation and the reality of metropolitan societies, to question colonial and racial hierarchies. These characteristics of their recruitment and service and the new political ideas to which some were exposed help to explain the active political role that some returned colonial troops took in the post-war years.

  • 9 In Canada, although First Nations men were exempted in January 1918 from the Conscr (...)
  • 10 In South Africa, some 21,000 served behind the lines in France in the South African (...)

9The Black Diggers were fewer in number than the many thousands sent from elsewhere in the British empire and Dominions. They enlisted haphazardly across the wide land, their acceptance into the ranks dependent on the whim of a recruiting officer who was prepared to overlook a rather dark skin or who was eager to fill his quota. They were genuine volunteers, no force or inducement was used; on the contrary, excluded by the Defence Act, they could be and were turned away by the recruiting officers. In some cases, when rejected under one name, they enlisted under another: when John Bews, whose career will be discussed later, was initially rejected, he re-enlisted as Arthur Walker. Even when the Government relaxed the restrictions in March 1917 to allow Aboriginal men with one white parent to enlist, they remained, like the white recruits, volunteers. Whatever may have been their private hopes and motives for enlisting, they were promised nothing by the recruiters or the Australian government, neither change in status nor social or political rights. They were not the object of recruitment drives as occurred in the other white dominions in the later stages of the war.9 And they did not serve in units that were all or majority Indigenous.10 As they were volunteers, it can be concluded that they were at least not hostile to the notion of fighting for King, Country and Empire.

  • 11 Quoted in Noah Riseman, “Aboriginal Military Service and Assimilation”, Aboriginal History (...)
  • 12 Grant was adopted as a baby by a white couple (his adoptive father was a taxidermist collec (...)

10The lack of official racial identification meant that no consistent discrimination could be exercised against them in terms of pay or conditions: in the army they found no doubt the first experience of relative equality with whites. That they found acceptance by the white soldiers seems to have been a fairly general experience: the consistent story told by Indigenous veterans is of being well accepted by their fellow soldiers. Black Digger Douglas Grant maintained that “the colour line was never drawn in the trenches.”11 As prisoners of war, however, as Grant himself discovered, they might find themselves classed by the Germans with the Africans, Indians and West Indians enrolled in the British Empire’s forces.12

The Black Diggers’ Return

  • 13 From 1913 to 1927, Aboriginal reserve land fell from its peak of 26,000 acres (10,522 hecta (...)
  • 14 Andrea Gerrard and Kristyn Harman, “Lives Twisted out of Shape! Tasmanian Aboriginal (...)

11The Black Diggers came back to Australia singly or in small groups and, scattered across the vast continent, most disappeared back into the semi-obscurity of the mission stations. In general, the extent of control over Aboriginal peoples exercised by the Protection Boards was enhanced during and after the war and their living and working conditions worsened, as the country for which they had fought was increasingly taken from them.13 The stripping away of these lands, now recognised as the second dispossession, was accelerated by the post-war soldier resettlement schemes that handed land, including successful Aboriginal farms, to returning World War One veterans. Aboriginal returned soldiers were often informed that the soldier settlement scheme did not apply to them, although some Tasmanian Aboriginal veterans successfully applied for land under this scheme as did a solitary veteran in New South Wales.14

  • 15 Noah Riseman, “Enduring Legacies, Enduring Prejudices; Australian Aboriginal Participation (...)
  • 16 “Returned Soldier Victimised”, Abo Call, May 2, 1938, 2. Australian Abo Call publis (...)
  • 17 In 1949, the Commonwealth Electoral Act extended the franchise “permanently and unc (...)

12In theory the Aboriginal returned soldiers had the right to request the same benefits that accrued to other veterans. In practice they may not have known about them or found obstacles in the way of accessing them, such as remoteness from the Repatriation Centres. In some instances, quarantined monies were not paid out or were paid not to the veteran but to the Protection Boards on mainland Australia (there were no Boards in Tasmania).15 Letters to the authorities or published in the short-lived Australian Abo Call, monthly paper of the Aboriginal-led Aborigines’ Progressive Association, provided evidence of the difficulty in obtaining benefits. Abo Call for May 1938 reports the case of an Aboriginal returned soldier who had been waiting for four years for the housing relief promised by the Protection Board; another returned soldier wrote that his wife had been on three occasions refused the maternity allowance because she was Aboriginal.16 Abo Call drew the attention of the RSSILA (the Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League of Australia, the principal veterans’ organisation) to these injustices, obtaining the resolution from the City of Sydney branch that “all men of Aboriginal blood who served in the AIF be granted full citizen’s rights and all social services be made available to them.” The Black Diggers had to wait ten years, however, and for another war to pass, before this right was granted.17

  • 18 “Cleaning up Port Augusta”, Transcontinental, May 27, 1927, 3.

13Many white veterans also suffered from post-war neglect, had difficulty accessing benefits and lived with physical and mental handicaps and unacknowledged trauma, but, in addition, the Black veterans had to fight against the crushing prejudice of the time, the institutional discrimination and structural inequalities. The post-war career of the Black Digger veteran John Bews, self-described as a “half-caste,” offers an insight into the difficulty of finding a role in a society deeply imbued with notions of racial hierarchy that were moreover enshrined in discriminatory legislation. He did not return to the Point Pearce mission from which he had enlisted but tried to find work and a place in the wider society. The strain of this may be deduced from his wandering life and repeated appearances in the magistrate’s court, charged with being “Idle and Disorderly” or “Drunk.” By early 1927 he was being described in court as an “old offender” who was “usually sent back to gaol soon after he comes out.”18 Only when he returned to the mission in mid-1927 and found a role representing the Aboriginal inhabitants there, did the court appearances cease. Douglas Grant, the best known of the Black Digger veterans, spent most of the 1930s in the Mental Hospital in Callan Park Sydney, after trying and failing to find his place in post-war Australia.

14The veterans might obtain exemption certificates, the exact criteria for which depended on the legislation in each State; service in the armed forces would be an argument that the man “was no longer considered an Aboriginal.” But the certificate brought significant complications: the man had to renounce contact with his fellows, could not visit the mission stations and Aboriginal reserves without authorisation or supply alcohol to the residents. The ambiguity of this situation meant that the possessor of a certificate could find himself on the wrong side of the law in a Catch 22 situation. Such was the experience of John Bews, possessed of an exemption certificate, who, over the course of several appearances in the magistrate’s court, found himself prosecuted both as an Aborigine for consuming liquor and as an “honorary white” for entering an Aboriginal reserve without permission. His dilemma, reported in the local paper, is worth recounting in full:

  • 19 “Paradox of Two-Color Laws”, Herald (Melbourne), December 21, 1934, 5.

Several years ago, he said, being classed as a white man, he had been sent to gaol for six months at Port Victor for having entered an Aborigines’ reserve. Now, being classed as a half caste, he was charged with having had liquor in his possession. He seemed unable to get a fair deal either way.19

  • 20 “In theory, the ‘Victorian solution’ since 1886 had sought the absorption and eventual disa (...)

15When he protested the contradictions of the law, the latter case was dropped. The policy of assimilation that prevailed across the States in various forms by the 1930s, created a hazy and uncertain system of categorisation for the many “half-castes” who formed the bulk of the veterans. Diane Barwick records Black Digger veterans as saying bitterly: “We were too black to get work or State Relief and too white to get help from the Board.”20

  • 21 Evening News (Rockhampton, Qld.) May 17, 1930, 5.

16Without the exemption certificates, the fate of the returned soldiers, where they could live and work, even who they could marry, was at the discretion of the Protection Boards. Minor misdemeanours might mean their removal to one of the reserves that housed unwanted populations of Aborigines. The Rockhampton Evening News reported the removal to Palm Island of two Black Digger veterans, after minor convictions for vagrancy and a “disturbance”: “The bad old convict days of Australia are recalled by the banishment from the mainland to Palm Island of two half-caste Aborigines—Martin Blyth and Charles Alley—both returned soldiers.”21

  • 22 The Sydney Morning Herald reported the initiative of the residents of Caroona missi (...)
  • 23 Sydney Morning Herald, April 26, 1935, 11.
  • 24 The manager of Angledool Aboriginal Station explained that he “found it very hard t (...)

17While individual stations sometimes erected plaques or occasionally more ambitious memorials to their Black Diggers,22 few were aware of or remembered their service in the wider white society where occasional evocation of Aboriginal soldiers might refer to only a handful of men, far underestimating their true numbers. Giving an account of the march on Anzac Day 1935 in Sydney, the reporter noted, as “unexpected types among the marchers,” a number of Aboriginal veterans among the Light Horse men.23 The reporter’s surprise reveals much about the ignorance at the time of Aboriginal service. The RSSILA’s journal Reveille attempted in 1932 to list the names of all the Aboriginal soldiers but information was often difficult to procure: the men might be away droving, they might have enlisted in a region far from their home or they might have actively attempted to avoid the authorities on their return. Similar difficulties were recorded in compiling the report of the NSW Protection Board on “men of Aboriginal parentage who enlisted and served with the AIF.”24

  • 25 It is interesting to note that Douglas Grant echoed this view: “This country was ta (...)
  • 26 Timothy C. Winegard, “'Now it is all over… I am practically No-Body'. Indigenous Veterans o (...)
  • 27 In 1902, by the Commonwealth Franchise Act, Maori residents in Australia were granted (...)
  • 28 These descriptions are found, for example, in the titles of books and articles written by t (...)

18In most of the imperial colonies, the wartime role of Indigenous troops was downplayed, ignored or forgotten but the Black Diggers faced the additional obstacle of a conceptual barrier to recognising their service. The prevailing ideology of white Australia denied the reality of the Black Wars, propagating the myth that the country had been settled more or less peacefully without meeting armed resistance.25 According to the contemporary martial race theories, that attributed to the Maori of New Zealand or the Zulu of Africa a fierce and warlike disposition, the Aboriginal man was not considered to be a warrior.26 It is telling that some Aboriginal men enlisted by claiming to be Maori.27 Moreover, to recognise that the “white army” had contained black troops ran counter to its founding principles. Finally, the racial theories of the time deemed the Aborigines an inferior race, bound to give way to the superior. It was the almost universal belief, from leading anthropologists to writers in the popular press, that the race was dying out through its contact with the whites, as indeed had proved to be the case, as disease, famine and conflict had reduced their numbers from many hundreds of thousands to perhaps 60-70,000 by the early twentieth century. The conclusion quickly followed that it was a “doomed”, a “vanishing” race.28 What complicated this picture, however, was the soaring number of “half-castes” who, in the southern States, far outnumbered the “full-bloods.” Because of the army’s recruitment policies, many Black Digger veterans belonged to the former category and found themselves caught up in the debates around the “half-caste problem” and the solutions it supposedly required.

Black Digger Activism

  • 29 An Adelaide RSL official observed that few Aboriginal ex-servicemen visited the club except (...)
  • 30 AWM Indigenous Histories: https://indigenoushistories.com/page/1/.

19The conditions of their service and their return to a white Australia thus largely determined the forms that the Black Diggers’ post-war activism could take. There could be little concerted action, whether during the war or after it: on their return the veterans were scattered across the country and did not know or could not easily maintain contact with fellow Black Diggers. The RSSILA (later the RSL) might have provided such a point of contact but in practice some excluded Aboriginal veterans, except on Anzac Day, and some veterans self-excluded, feeling that they were not welcome.29 An incident is recorded of a branch of the RSSILA in Queensland demanding the exclusion of Aboriginal children, some of them the children of Black Diggers, from attending the local school with whites.30

  • 31 The intervention of the General Secretary of the RSSILA on behalf of Tasmanian Henr (...)
  • 32 “Two banished from the mainland. Soldiers detained on island”, Evening News (Rockhampton, Q (...)
  • 33 Jessica Horton, “‘Willing to Fight to a Man’. The First World War and Aboriginal Activism i (...)

20In some rare instances RSSILA branches (usually city branches) did press for Black Diggers to be given the vote, particularly after World War Two, or represented an Indigenous veteran on a particular issue.31 In the case of the banishment of the two Black Digger veterans to Palm Island, the RSSILA in Northern Queensland protested to the authorities at what they called the “barbarous treatment” of the two men.32 There were however no organisations that campaigned exclusively for the rights and interests of the Black Digger veterans. They were thrown back on their own resources, as in the case of James Arden from Lake Condah mission. Jessica Horton recounts the determination with which this Black Digger veteran, older than most of the volunteers, resisted the incursions of the manager into his family’s life and contested the manager's attempt to withhold his military pension.33

  • 34 Douglas Grant Papers. State Library of NSW, MLMSS 2766/Item 1.
  • 35 John Bews, “Letters to the Editor”, The Register (Adelaide), February 2, 1928, 7.

21At the local level, veteran activism took the form of community representation: these were men with experience of the world beyond the station and indeed the country, who were used to communicating with white society on a more equal footing than their fellows. Douglas Grant, in the prisoner of war camp, played a role that was to become typical of the Black Digger veterans: as spokesman, intermediary and translator for his fellow prisoners, it was he who wrote to the Red Cross for supplies and was responsible for their distribution.34 John Bews, back on Point Pearce mission in the late 1920s, seems to have found a more settled and productive life acting as secretary to the residents on the station. He represented their interests, writing in 1928 to advocate for the retention of a popular nurse for example, though in this case his request fell on deaf ears.35

  • 36 Philippa Scarlett, “Finding Frederick Prentice”, https://indigenoushistories.com/20 (...)
  • 37 “£3,000,000 Deficit: Economy! Retrenchment Axe Falls. Lithgow Dismissals. Naval 'Thrift’”, (...)

22Occasionally, a Black Digger veteran took on a role representing a broader community. Frederick Prentice was the Australian Workers Union representative for Comet Vale in 1937.36 Douglas Grant became secretary of the Lithgow RSL: in 1929 the local newspaper reported him in this official capacity protesting about the mass dismissal of staff at the Lithgow Small Arms factory that employed many returned soldiers and Grant himself. “Mr Douglas Grant, secretary, Lithgow RSL, repeated last night that the Government imagined that ‘promises could be broken like pie-crust.’”37 Given that some branches did not allow Aboriginal men to attend, Grant must have exhibited considerable qualities of leadership to gain this position. He won the re-instatement of some of the workers but, as we have seen, by the early 1930s he was having increasing difficulty in adjusting to his return to white Australia.

  • 38 “Official Correspondance”, The Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer, July 29, 1919, (...)

23Black Digger veterans sought other ways to help their fellow veterans, Indigenous and non-Indigenous. William Bonner, son of “King Billy” of the Port Stephens Aboriginal tribes, wrote on several occasions immediately after the war to R. Atkinson-Price, MLA, of his desire to help returned soldiers through exploiting his knowledge of local deposits of gold and other minerals. He also wrote of organising a petition to the Crown and Parliament to achieve “a home for returned soldiers before anything else” and “to make us all a united state of natives and Australian and returned soldiers.” Sadly, he succumbed to the Spanish flu in 1919.38

  • 39 John Maynard, "War Voices: Australian Aboriginal Political Revolt Post-First World War", in (...)

24Several Leagues and Associations to promote the interests of the Aboriginal people were founded in the inter-war period. The earliest was the Aboriginal-led Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA), established in 1924. This Association has been well-documented by John Maynard, whose grandfather, Fred Maynard, led a vigorous five year campaign in defence of their rights to land and in resistance to the Protection Boards and their role in the removal of Aboriginal children from their families.39 The Aborigines Progressive Association, founded in 1937, was led by J. T. Patten and William Ferguson with Aboriginal membership. Patten published six issues of the Australian Abo Call in 1938; its masthead proclaimed its mission as: “Education, Opportunity and Full Citizen Rights”. It campaigned for citizenship rights for “civilised” Aborigines and for education and “uplift” to enable those living mainly in the north of the country to access the advantages and rights of “modern civilisation.” Black Digger veterans gravitated to these associations, wrote letters to Abo Call to support or query their demands and advocated for better treatment for those left behind in the “march of progress.” But the veterans also contributed to the debates that were taking place in the wider society about the place and future of its Indigenous peoples.

"One law for every dinkum Australian"

  • 40 John Bews, “Control of Aborigines: 'Proud that I am exempt”’, To the Editor, Advertiser (Ad (...)
  • 41 John Bews, “Protection of Aboriginals”, Advertiser (Adelaide), January 24, 1928, 15 (...)
  • 42 John Bews, Advertiser (Adelaide), January 11, 1928, 10.
  • 43 Bews wrote: “Surely the Aborigines' Protection Board will grant all Aboriginal retu (...)
  • 44 John Bews, “Rights of Aboriginal Soldiers”, Points from Letters, Advertiser (Adelaide), Sep (...)

25John Bews, after his return to the mission, sent a steady flow of letters to the Adelaide newspapers, demonstrating a high degree of reflection on and commitment to the causes, both local and national, that might advance the interests of his community. He was particularly concerned with the mismanagement of the missions and the waste of the “almost white race of men” (he is referring to the “half-castes”) kept in idle dependence on the meagre government handouts, who could profitably be employed on a well-run station.40 In another letter to the Advertiser in 1928, he protested against the Protection Act, that did not protect and treated Aboriginal people as “little children.”41 He also contributed to the debate over the creation of a model State for Aboriginal people, expressing broad support for the proposal and citing Black Diggers’ war service as proof of their capacity to govern such a State. He did, however, comment ironically that “it seems rather late, since Australia was taken from the Aboriginals, to be thinking of procuring a model State for them.”42 In 1942 he called for full citizenship rights for all Aborigines “willing to accept them”: “one law for every dinkum Australian.”43 His final letters, published at the end of the war, celebrated the news of the surrender of Japan and asked once more for full citizenship rights for Indigenous ex-servicemen and for Federal control of Aboriginal affairs.44

  • 45 The expression “wild Aborigines” is used in the Abo Call.
  • 46 William Cooper, “Treatment of Aborigines”, Letters to the Editor, Age, March 16, 1933. Coop (...)
  • 47 John Bews, “Shooting to kill”, Letters to the Editor, Observer (Adelaide), July 6, (...)

26Bews’s correspondence demonstrates extensive knowledge of the contemporary debates around Aboriginal rights and a reflective and eloquent defence of their interests. It also reveals, however, the distinction that many Indigenous activists made between the “civilised” blacks, mostly those living in the south of the country (classed with the “dinkum Australians”), and the “wild Aborigines", mainly to be found in the north.45 Their demands for civil rights usually acknowledged that the northern Aborigines would not or could not immediately access these rights but would need support and education to enable them to do so. It was the responsibility both of the whites and of the “advanced Aborigines" to protect and aid them during this transition, though how this might best be done was the subject of some debate. William Cooper, Secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League, wrote: “During the war many Aborigines were among the first to offer for enlistment in the AIF to protect the British Empire. Surely, then, it is our duty to protect the remainder of their race from inhuman treatment.”46 It is significant that Cooper, in the context of protecting the tribal Aborigines, wrote as though he was not a member of “their race,” although he was born into the Moira tribe and raised on the Aboriginal mission at Maloga. Both Bews and Grant wrote to the papers to condemn the use of armed force against “the hapless natives of the Northern Territory.”47

  • 48 Douglas Grant, “The Call for Justice.”

27In 1933, Grant penned a passionate denunciation of the fate of the Indigenous peoples at the hands of the British settlers. In an echo of the myth of the noble savage, he claimed that before the arrival of the white man they had followed a code of strict moral ethics “that was higher and nobler in its principles than even the so-called morals of civilisation.”48 The solution to the “Aboriginal problem” lay in his eyes in the complete isolation of the remaining tribal natives to protect them from the injurious influence and cruel treatment of the white men.

War Service and the Right to Citizenship

  • 49 “Protection of Aboriginals.” Advertiser (Adelaide), January 24, 1928, 15.
  • 50 J. T. Patten and W. Ferguson, Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights! A Statement for the (...)
  • 51 William Cooper, Secretary, Australian Aborigines’ League to the Minister for the Interior J (...)
  • 52 Martin Crotty, “The Anzac Citizen: Towards a History of the RSL.” Australian Journal of Pol (...)

28Bews’s correspondence also conveys an argument that would be consistent across both veteran and non-veteran campaigns for Aboriginal rights: the citing of the wartime service of the Black Diggers as proof of their capacity to be loyal and responsible citizens.49 “We were good enough to fight as Anzacs. We earned equality then. Why do you deny it to us now?” wrote Patten and Ferguson.50 Indeed, their service might be cited as evidence that they were more loyal and patriotic than the whites who had stayed at home.51 The link between military service and citizenship was embedded in the ideology of the nation state and, as Martin Crotty writes, this philosophy underpinned the RSSILA’s campaigns for better pension rights, employment opportunities and access to land for those who had served.52 This belief no doubt helped to inspire the motions passed by RSSILA branches demanding citizenship for Black Digger veterans. It inspired too the arguments of the Indigenous activists who cited the war service of Black Diggers to demonstrate that their people were worthy and capable of playing a role in the further settlement and defence of the country, notably in solving the problem of the “Empty North.” William Cooper wrote to the Minister for the Interior:

  • 53 William Cooper, Secretary, Australian Aborigines’ League, to the Minister for the (...)

We claim that, given a trial, we will prove that we are capable of producing a yeomanry that can open up and develop the outback better than anyone else. We are acclimatized, and as our primitive people become civilized, they lose the Aboriginal culture and outlook taking on the psychology of the white man. The Aboriginal is loyal to the Throne and Person of his Majesty. The development of Australia by civilized Aborigines is therefore sound in that it provides a bulwark for the defence of your land and ours.53

  • 54 The Register (Adelaide), June 19, 1928, 15.
  • 55 “The Aborigines. Give them an Opportunity. Interesting Plea.” Townsville Daily Bulletin, Fe (...)

29Bews argued, citing once again the Black Diggers' war service, that populating the north of Australia was a task for the Aboriginal people, rather than for an influx of European migrants.54 Douglas Grant agreed that, freed from mission influence, "the Aborigine could be used usefully to occupy outposts in the Continent where at present, a European could not go.” He likened his proposal to that of the reserves set aside for “Red Indians” in America.55

30The arguments of the veteran and non-veteran activists were to no avail: no improvements were made to the status or rights of the Black Diggers or the Indigenous peoples in the inter-war years. As another war loomed, they sought to ensure that this time their service would bring tangible benefits and the recognition of citizenship. William Cooper wrote to the Minister for the Interior in January 1939:

  • 56 William Cooper, Secretary, Australian Aborigines’ League, to the Minister for the Interio (...)

My point, Mr McEwen, is that the enlistment of natives should be preceded by the removal of all disabilities. Then, with a country to fight for, the Aborigines would not be one whit behind white men in value. Can you not get my point? Can we not have a “Balfour declaration” for natives of a national home in Australia. It will cost nothing to give the native born in the land the same right, not merely of the persons of European blood, but of Maoris and people of Chinese, Japanese or other Asiatic peoples, who may happen to be born in Australia, but it will give a great asset to Australia and the addition of a valuable unit of additional population.56

  • 57 Patten & Ferguson, Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights, op. cit., 9-11.
  • 58 Russell McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2011, (...)

31To make certain that the military contribution of Black Diggers would not be again ignored, J. T. Patten proposed the formation of separate Aboriginal regiments within the Australian army57 and after the outbreak of war William Ferguson wrote to Menzies to propose an “Aboriginal Division.”58 For those Indigenous units that were created in the north of Australia and the Torres Strait, however, the unintended consequence was that the men could be paid less than regular army recruits. Aboriginal men were, moreover, still formally excluded from enlistment in the regular army unless “substantially of European descent.” The service of the Black Diggers became, however, in the longer term, a powerful and unassailable argument for citizenship rights, cited by Indigenous and non-Indigenous campaigners alike and supported by the General Secretary of the RSSILA who wrote to Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1940 to request these rights for Aboriginal soldiers, and after the war, by the many sub-branches that passed motions of support. As Indigenous leaders took up with renewed vigour the pre-war demands, the activism of the inter-war years contributed both personnel and argument to the burgeoning post-World War Two campaigns: the granting of citizenship rights to Black Diggers in 1949 can be seen as the first step in their extension to all First Nations people.

Conclusion

32This article has sought to identify the constraints on the activism of Black Digger returned soldiers as they attempted to navigate a path through the laws, categorisations and negative expectations imposed on them by the oppressive, racially defined inter-war consensus. They embodied and contended with the contradictions that attached to the status of returned soldier, "Aborigine" and “half-caste” in white society. Despite the high personal cost that many paid in transitioning back to civilian life, they played a social and political role that belied their small numbers. They reminded white society by their very presence and the articulation of their points of view on State and Federal policy towards the Indigenous peoples that, despite being excluded from the census until 1967, “they counted”, and provided irrefutable evidence and argument for the capacity and right of First Nations people to be recognised as citizens.

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Bibliographie

ATTWOOD Bain & Andrew MARKUS, Thinking Black. William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004.

BARWICK Diane E., “Changes in the Aboriginal Population of Victoria, 1863-1966”, in Derek J. Mulvaney & Jack Golson (ed.), Aboriginal Man and Environment in Australia, Canberra: ANU Press, 1971, 288-315.

COCHRANE Peter, Best We Forget. The War for White Australia, 1914-1918, Melbourne: Text Publishing Co. 2018.

CROTTY Martin, “The Anzac Citizen: Towards a History of the RSL”, Australian Journal of Politics & History, vol. 53, no. 2, 2000, 183-193.

EVANS Jake, “Indigenous Soldiers’ Stories of Pride, Pain after World Wars told in the Facing Two Fronts Exhibition”, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-24, accessed on July 17, 2022.

GERRARD Andrea & Kristyn HARMAN, “Lives Twisted out of Shape! Tasmanian Aboriginal Soldiers and the Aftermath of the First World War”, Aboriginal History 3, 2015, 183-201.

HAINS Brigid, The Ice and the Inland. Mawson, Flynn and the Myth of the Frontier, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002.

HORTON Jessica, “‘Willing to Fight to a Man’. The First World War and Aboriginal Activism in the Western District of Victoria”, Aboriginal History 39, 2015, 203-222.

MAYNARD John, "War Voices: Australian Aboriginal Political Revolt Post-First World War", in Renée Dickason, Delphine Lefort, Michel Prum & Stéphanie A. H. Bélanger (ed.), War and Remembrance: Recollecting and Representing War, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022, 25-35.

MCGREGOR Russell, Indifferent Inclusion, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2011.

PATTEN J. T. & W. FERGUSON, Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights! A Statement for the Case of the Aborigines’ Progressive Association, Sydney: The Publicist, 1938.

RECHNIEWSKI Elizabeth, “Resénégalisation and the Representation of Black African Troops during World War One”, in Ben Wellings & Shanti Sumartojo (ed.), Commemorating Race and Empire in the First World War Centenary, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018, 79-92.

RISEMAN Noah, Defending Whose Country. Indigenous Soldiers in the Pacific War, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

RISEMAN Noah, “Aboriginal Military Service and Assimilation”, Aboriginal History 38, 2014, 155-178.

RISEMAN Noah, “Enduring Legacies, Enduring Prejudices; Australian Aboriginal Participation in the First World War”, in David Monger, Katie Pickles & Sarah Murray (ed.), Endurance and the First World War: Experience and Legacies in New Zealand and Australia, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, 178-195.

SCARLETT Philippa, “Finding Frederick Prentice”, https://indigenoushistories.com/2014/09/05/finding-frederick-prentice-mm/, accessed July 17 2022.

STORY, Eric, “'The Awakening Has Come': Canadian First Nations in the Great War Era, 1914-1932”, Canadian Military History, vol. 24, no. 2, 2015, 11-35.

WINEGARD Timothy C., “‘Now it is all over… I am practically No-Body’. Indigenous Veterans of Canada and Australia and the Great War for Civilisation”, First World War Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, 2019, 12-30.

WOOD JONES F., Australia’s Vanishing Race, Melbourne: Angus & Robertson, 1934.

Archives consulted

Douglas Grant Papers ca 1918, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 2766/Item 1.

National Library of Australia digitised newspapers: trove.nla.gov.au/.

Australian War Memorial digitised collections. AWM Indigenous Histories: https://indigenoushistories.com.

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Notes

1 Noah Riseman, Defending Whose Country. Indigenous Soldiers in the Pacific War, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012, 4-5.

2 First World War Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (2019). Special issue: Colonial Veterans of WWI.

3 Although a few Torres Strait IsIander soldiers served in World War One, post-war discussion around the rights of First Nations' soldiers and communities, including by the Black Diggers themselves, employed exclusively the terms "Aborigine" and "Aboriginal". This usage is therefore inevitably prominent in this article.

4 Peter Cochrane, Best We Forget. The War for White Australia, 1914-1918, Melbourne: Text Publishing Co., 2018, 99.

5 Cochrane, Best We Forget, op. cit., 24; Brigid Hains, The Ice and the Inland. Mawson, Flynn and the Myth of the Frontier, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002, 105.

6 Cochrane, Best We Forget, op. cit., 9.

7 Jake Evans, “Indigenous Soldiers’ Stories of Pride, Pain after World Wars told in the Facing Two Fronts Exhibition”, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-24, accessed July 17, 2022.

8 Elizabeth Rechniewski, “Resénégalisation and the Representation of Black African Troops during World War One”, in Ben Wellings & Shanti Sumartojo (ed.), Commemorating Race and Empire in the First World War Centenary, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018, 79-92.

9 In Canada, although First Nations men were exempted in January 1918 from the Conscription Act of August 1917, many were recruited during the last two years of the war and over 4000 served over the four years of the war. Several battalions had a high proportion of First Nations men, including the 107th and the 114th.

Eric Story, “The Awakening Has Come”: Canadian First Nations in the Great War Era, 1914-1932", Canadian Military History, vol. 24, no. 2, 2015.

10 In South Africa, some 21,000 served behind the lines in France in the South African Native Contingent. In New Zealand Maori served in the Pioneer Battalion from 1916, and continued to constitute the majority of troops after its reformation in 1917.

11 Quoted in Noah Riseman, “Aboriginal Military Service and Assimilation”, Aboriginal History 38, 2014, 160-161.

12 Grant was adopted as a baby by a white couple (his adoptive father was a taxidermist collecting specimens for the Australia museum) after his Aboriginal parents were killed in circumstances that remain obscure. Given a good education, he trained to be a draftsman and joined the army in January 1916. Although he passed the sergeant’s exam, he was allowed to enlist only as a private. Wounded and taken prisoner at Bullecourt, he spent the last twenty-two months of the war in a German prisoner of war camp, where he was placed with the other Indigenous colonial troops. Recognised by a German doctor who had visited the Grant family in Australia before the war, Grant became the object of anthropological interest to the German scientists in the camp. Douglas Grant Papers ca 1918, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 2766/Item 1.

13 From 1913 to 1927, Aboriginal reserve land fell from its peak of 26,000 acres (10,522 hectares) to only half, some 13,000 acres (5,261 hectares). Seventy-five per cent of this land loss was prime coastal land which Aboriginal people had settled and farmed independently until they were forcibly removed.

14 Andrea Gerrard and Kristyn Harman, “Lives Twisted out of Shape! Tasmanian Aboriginal Soldiers and the Aftermath of the First World War”, Aboriginal History 39, 2015, 198.

15 Noah Riseman, “Enduring Legacies, Enduring Prejudices; Australian Aboriginal Participation in the First World War”, in David Monger, Katie Pickles and Sarah Murray (ed.), Endurance and the First World War: Experience and Legacies in New Zealand and Australia, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, 188-189; Gerrard & Harman, “Lives Twisted out of Shape”, op. cit., 195.

16 “Returned Soldier Victimised”, Abo Call, May 2, 1938, 2. Australian Abo Call published six issues between April and September 1938.

17 In 1949, the Commonwealth Electoral Act extended the franchise “permanently and unconditionally, to all Aboriginal persons who had been or were serving in the military”.

18 “Cleaning up Port Augusta”, Transcontinental, May 27, 1927, 3.

19 “Paradox of Two-Color Laws”, Herald (Melbourne), December 21, 1934, 5.

20 “In theory, the ‘Victorian solution’ since 1886 had sought the absorption and eventual disappearance of a ‘dying race’ through the dilution of ‘blood’ and the encouragement of miscegenation. … In practice, doing so meant that a ‘fractional Aboriginal identity’ was insufficient to justify support as an Aboriginal person, but sufficient to deny equality, both legal and cultural, with whites.” Diane E. Barwick, “Changes in the Aboriginal Population of Victoria, 1863-1966”, in Derek J. Mulvaney and Jack Golson (ed.), Aboriginal Man and Environment in Australia, Canberra: ANU Press, 1971, 291.

21 Evening News (Rockhampton, Qld.) May 17, 1930, 5.

22 The Sydney Morning Herald reported the initiative of the residents of Caroona mission who erected their own memorial to their veterans, the Gate of Memory. “The Gate of Memory: Raised by Coloured Folk”, Sydney Morning Herald, August 17, 1935, 11.

23 Sydney Morning Herald, April 26, 1935, 11.

24 The manager of Angledool Aboriginal Station explained that he “found it very hard to get in touch with the people named as they are on the move all the time and this information has been given by other people that are conversant with them.” Figures given in “Returns showing particulars of men of Aboriginal parentage who enlisted and served with the AIF, presented by the Board for Protection of Aborigines, Sydney, 10 August 1932”, AWM27:533/1.

25 It is interesting to note that Douglas Grant echoed this view: “This country was taken without warfare, such as marked the annexation of lndia, Africa, and lesser parts of the Empire.” “The Call for Justice. Douglas Grant appeals for his people”, Lithgow Marcury, February 8, 1929, 3.

26 Timothy C. Winegard, “'Now it is all over… I am practically No-Body'. Indigenous Veterans of Canada and Australia and the Great War for Civilisation”, First World War Studies, vol. 10, no 1, 2019, 12-30, 13.

27 In 1902, by the Commonwealth Franchise Act, Maori residents in Australia were granted the right to vote. During the same period, their right to settle in Australia was facilitated by their status as British subjects.

28 These descriptions are found, for example, in the titles of books and articles written by the anthropologist F. Wood Jones, author of Australia’s Vanishing Race, Melbourne: Angus & Robertson, 1934.

29 An Adelaide RSL official observed that few Aboriginal ex-servicemen visited the club except during the Anzac Day period. "Not Types Who Should Drink", Advertiser, May 29, 1951, 11.

30 AWM Indigenous Histories: https://indigenoushistories.com/page/1/.

31 The intervention of the General Secretary of the RSSILA on behalf of Tasmanian Henry George Brown is cited in Gerrard & Harman, “Lives Twisted out of Shape”, op. cit., 192.

32 “Two banished from the mainland. Soldiers detained on island”, Evening News (Rockhampton, Qld.), May 17, 1930, 5. The two men later claimed they had not asked to be brought back from the island.

33 Jessica Horton, “‘Willing to Fight to a Man’. The First World War and Aboriginal Activism in the Western District of Victoria”, Aboriginal History 39, 2015, 203-222.

34 Douglas Grant Papers. State Library of NSW, MLMSS 2766/Item 1.

35 John Bews, “Letters to the Editor”, The Register (Adelaide), February 2, 1928, 7.

36 Philippa Scarlett, “Finding Frederick Prentice”, https://indigenoushistories.com/2014/09/05/finding-frederick-prentice-mm/, accessed July 17 2022.

37 “£3,000,000 Deficit: Economy! Retrenchment Axe Falls. Lithgow Dismissals. Naval 'Thrift’”, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), June 26, 1929, 7.

38 “Official Correspondance”, The Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer, July 29, 1919, 2.

39 John Maynard, "War Voices: Australian Aboriginal Political Revolt Post-First World War", in Renée Dickason, Delphine Lefort, Michel Prum and Stéphanie A. H. Bélanger (ed.), War and Remembrance: Recollecting and Representing War, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022, 25-35.

40 John Bews, “Control of Aborigines: 'Proud that I am exempt”’, To the Editor, Advertiser (Adelaide), July 24, 1930, 12.

41 John Bews, “Protection of Aboriginals”, Advertiser (Adelaide), January 24, 1928, 15.

42 John Bews, Advertiser (Adelaide), January 11, 1928, 10.

43 Bews wrote: “Surely the Aborigines' Protection Board will grant all Aboriginal returned soldiers and others working in Army camp jobs and munition factories an unconditional exemption from all Aboriginal laws and bylaws. We honor democracy and British justice. One law for every dinkum Australian.” Letters to the Editor, News (Adelaide), June 25, 1942, 7.

44 John Bews, “Rights of Aboriginal Soldiers”, Points from Letters, Advertiser (Adelaide), September 21 1945; John Bews, “Citizen Rights for Aboriginal Soldiers”, Advertiser (Adelaide), March 29, 1946, 10.

45 The expression “wild Aborigines” is used in the Abo Call.

46 William Cooper, “Treatment of Aborigines”, Letters to the Editor, Age, March 16, 1933. Cooper had lost a son in the war.

47 John Bews, “Shooting to kill”, Letters to the Editor, Observer (Adelaide), July 6, 1929.

48 Douglas Grant, “The Call for Justice.”

49 “Protection of Aboriginals.” Advertiser (Adelaide), January 24, 1928, 15.

50 J. T. Patten and W. Ferguson, Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights! A Statement for the Case of the Aborigines’ Progressive Association, Sydney: The Publicist, 1938, 10.

51 William Cooper, Secretary, Australian Aborigines’ League to the Minister for the Interior John McEwen, Canberra, 3 January 1939, quoted in Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus, Thinking Black. William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004, 112.

52 Martin Crotty, “The Anzac Citizen: Towards a History of the RSL.” Australian Journal of Politics & History vol. 53, no, 2, 2007, 183-193.

53 William Cooper, Secretary, Australian Aborigines’ League, to the Minister for the Interior, Thomas Paterson, June 25, 1937, quoted in Attwood & Markus, Thinking Black, op. cit., 77.

54 The Register (Adelaide), June 19, 1928, 15.

55 “The Aborigines. Give them an Opportunity. Interesting Plea.” Townsville Daily Bulletin, February 25, 1933, 10.

56 William Cooper, Secretary, Australian Aborigines’ League, to the Minister for the Interior, John McEwen, Canberra, 3 January 1939, quoted in Attwood and Markus, Thinking Black, op. cit., 113.

57 Patten & Ferguson, Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights, op. cit., 9-11.

58 Russell McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2011, 52.

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Elizabeth Rechniewski, « “Forms of Engagement”: the Varied Responses of Black Diggers on Their Return to White Australia »Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [En ligne], vol.23-n°59 | 2025, mis en ligne le 12 mai 2025, consulté le 12 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/17094

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Auteur

Elizabeth Rechniewski



Dr Elizabeth Rechniewski (chevalier des palmes académiques, ONM) is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney in the School of Languages and Cultures. She is co-chair of the research committee of the Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations (ISFAR) and associate of the project “Democratic Alliances in the Indo-Pacific” (LERMA, AMU). She has a long-standing research interest in the political uses of the national past and has published widely on remembrance of twentieth century war in Australia, France and New Caledonia, including on the commemoration of the role of Indigenous soldiers in these countries. Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery project on the post-Cold War world (2013-2016) with a focus on the impact of Cold War ideology on decolonisation in the French empire, she published with Judith Keene, Seeking Meaning, Seeking Justice in a Post-Cold War World (Brill 2018). Current projects include research into the tensions between France and Australia over control of the South Pacific in the late nineteenth-twentieth century and on the early period of the Anglo-French condominium in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu).

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