Notes
Noah Riseman, Defending Whose Country. Indigenous Soldiers in the Pacific War, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012, 4-5.
First World War Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (2019). Special issue: Colonial Veterans of WWI.
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.
Peter Cochrane, Best We Forget. The War for White Australia, 1914-1918, Melbourne: Text Publishing Co., 2018, 99.
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.
Cochrane, Best We Forget, op. cit., 9.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Quoted in Noah Riseman, “Aboriginal Military Service and Assimilation”, Aboriginal History 38, 2014, 160-161.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Returned Soldier Victimised”, Abo Call, May 2, 1938, 2. Australian Abo Call published six issues between April and September 1938.
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”.
“Cleaning up Port Augusta”, Transcontinental, May 27, 1927, 3.
“Paradox of Two-Color Laws”, Herald (Melbourne), December 21, 1934, 5.
“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.
Evening News (Rockhampton, Qld.) May 17, 1930, 5.
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.
Sydney Morning Herald, April 26, 1935, 11.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
AWM Indigenous Histories: https://indigenoushistories.com/page/1/.
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.
“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.
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.
Douglas Grant Papers. State Library of NSW, MLMSS 2766/Item 1.
John Bews, “Letters to the Editor”, The Register (Adelaide), February 2, 1928, 7.
Philippa Scarlett, “Finding Frederick Prentice”, https://indigenoushistories.com/2014/09/05/finding-frederick-prentice-mm/, accessed July 17 2022.
“£3,000,000 Deficit: Economy! Retrenchment Axe Falls. Lithgow Dismissals. Naval 'Thrift’”, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), June 26, 1929, 7.
“Official Correspondance”, The Wingham Chronicle and Manning River Observer, July 29, 1919, 2.
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.
John Bews, “Control of Aborigines: 'Proud that I am exempt”’, To the Editor, Advertiser (Adelaide), July 24, 1930, 12.
John Bews, “Protection of Aboriginals”, Advertiser (Adelaide), January 24, 1928, 15.
John Bews, Advertiser (Adelaide), January 11, 1928, 10.
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.
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.
The expression “wild Aborigines” is used in the Abo Call.
William Cooper, “Treatment of Aborigines”, Letters to the Editor, Age, March 16, 1933. Cooper had lost a son in the war.
John Bews, “Shooting to kill”, Letters to the Editor, Observer (Adelaide), July 6, 1929.
Douglas Grant, “The Call for Justice.”
“Protection of Aboriginals.” Advertiser (Adelaide), January 24, 1928, 15.
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.
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.
Martin Crotty, “The Anzac Citizen: Towards a History of the RSL.” Australian Journal of Politics & History vol. 53, no, 2, 2007, 183-193.
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.
The Register (Adelaide), June 19, 1928, 15.
“The Aborigines. Give them an Opportunity. Interesting Plea.” Townsville Daily Bulletin, February 25, 1933, 10.
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.
Patten & Ferguson, Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights, op. cit., 9-11.
Russell McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2011, 52.
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