2024 marks 110 years since the outbreak of the First World War.

1200 men of Aboriginal descent are known to have volunteered for service in the First World War, most of whom served abroad. Their participation was full. They volunteered from September 1914 to October 1918 and served in all major theatres of war. Some received decorations for valour – Military Medals and Distinguished Conduct Medals and were mentioned in despatches, as well as losing their lives. This took place against the background of a 1909 amendment to the Defence Act 1903, which comments in service records show was invoked by some recruiting officers to prohibit enlistment of Aboriginal men. Pertinent to today is that possibly 80 Aboriginal men served on Gallipoli.

Despite this, Aboriginal participation in the Australian Imperial Force remained unacknowledged for decades – yet another example of the Great Australian Silence pinpointed by W E H Stanner in 1968. In later years Rod Pratt writing on the Light Horse in the journal Sabretache in the 1990s, David Huggonson’s publication of stories of individual bravery as well and his 1980s touring exhibition Too Dark for the Light Horse  and Ray Minniecon’s Redfern Colored Digger March ongoing from 2007, were all important in consciousness raising. The 2011 publication of Philippa Scarlett’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Volunteers for the AIF: the Indigenous Response to World War One (Indigenous Histories) which was followed by three more updating editions, heralded a new phase in this process. It contained details of approximately 800 Aboriginal volunteers, a major advance on the 245 identified in the 1930s by the RSL journal Reveille and for the first time, aided by more realistic numbers, access to online service records and contemporary documents, presented a detailed analysis of enlistment and other aspects of Aboriginal service – one which has influenced later scholarship.

In subsequent years the momentum to recognise Aboriginal service increased, boosted by Aboriginal will and the efforts of interested non-Aboriginal scholars and supporters. This culminated in 2018 in the publication of Joan Beaumont’s and Allison Cadzow’s Serving Our Country: Indigenous Australians. War, Defence and Resilience. (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing) which signalled at last the achievement of the long awaited recognition of Aboriginal war service. Now there is an Aboriginal memorial in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial and memorials in most Australian states and Aboriginal service in all conflicts is recognised at all levels of government and continues to be the subject of articles in newsprint, television, radio and internet as well as popular and scholarly writing.

However the flourishing movement to accomplish recognition of Aboriginal war service has brought with it some cause for concern. Canadian historian Timothy Winegard was an early exponent of Australian Aboriginal First World War service which he in featured in his 2012 book Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions and the First World War (Cambridge University Press). His assessment (p.7) of the writing about Indigenous Dominion service which had been published since the 1980s has lessons for Australia. This was that most

works are driven by narrative. …The goal of these studies which succumb to the interpretive orthodoxy based on recycled generalisations and anecdotal corroboration is to ensure indigenous veterans receive public recognition in the increasingly reconciliatory and apologetic western democracies.

This relates in Australia to elements in both the popular and scholarly publications – both of which can overlap and it is clear that much of this overlapping can be laid at the door of ‘recycled generalisations and anecdotal corroboration.’

The overall Australian narrative which has emerged has basic key elements of which the most recurrent is unconditional acceptance of mateship, common to scholarly and popular writers alike. Its existence as an individual phenomenon rather than the popular conception of one embracing all AIF Aboriginal relationships is explored in my article ‘Aboriginal service in the First World War: Identity, recognition and the problem of mateship’ Aboriginal History, 39, (2015), 162-181) available on line via the Aboriginal History site.  Close behind is a string of much repeated ‘facts’ close to assuming the character of conventional wisdoms and which cumulatively could qualify for inclusion with the myths of Australian military history identified by Craig Stockings. (Zombie myths of Australian History, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010).

These orthodoxies, predominantly relating to enlistment and post war experience are:

• over 1000 sometimes 3000 men served overseas with the AIF,
• that they were paid less for their service,
• that Aboriginal men were prevented from enlisting by a 1914  ‘recruiters’ handbook’,
• that those who succeeded passed as southern European or Maori
• that the majority of enlistments took place after a relaxation of regulations in 1917 allowing men with one white parents to enlist
• and that the most common reasons for acceptance was signing a document declaring this fact

 On top of these are the assertions

• that there was a high rejection rate based on race,
• that most came from controlled lives on missions and reserves,
• and that post-war they were denied the benefits given to white men, such as  repatriation and soldier settlers blocks
•  they are also said to have been ‘not allowed’ or ineligible to march on Anzac day or to join the RSSILA.

There are elements of truth in most of these statements but mining the information in service and related records challenges commonly held ideas – although it should be stressed in no way changing the central narrative of discrimination and of exclusion from the Anzac legend.

 Of the approximately 1200 men who sought to enlist, to date only three quarters are known to have actually served overseas – the remainder were either rejected immediately or during their training, deserted or died before embarkation.

There was no differentiation in pay – Aboriginal men were recruited on the same terms as non-Aboriginal volunteers.

As far as the constantly repeated assertion in popular and scholarly accounts, that a 1914 recruiters’ handbook specifically prevented Aboriginal enlistment is concerned – so far no concrete evidence has been found for the exclusion of Aboriginal men before 1916 (see Instructions for the guidance of enlisting officers at approved military recruiting depots, Government Printer, Brisbane, 1916). However a 1914 circular issued by General Bridges stated that the qualifications for enlistment of recruits in the AIF should be those laid down in Australian Military Regulations for the militia. These were spelled out in a 1909 amendment to the Defence Act, which prohibited enlistment of men not substantially European but did not mention Aboriginal men. At least one identified 1914 instructions to New South Wales recruiters does not mention Aboriginal men (SRNSW: NRS 10929; [7/6187, Circular Memo No. 829). Efforts to locate the 1914 recruiters’ handbook have been futile but are on-going. A possible reference to it is a source, to date untraceable in Winegard 2012, 187-88. Any input from readers of this blog would be welcome.

The 1917 regulation loosening enlistment requirements had no effect except in Queensland where the continuing influence of Rod Pratt’s Queensland Sabretache 1990s articles has been responsible for the assumption that enlistments increased following this regulation. In fact analysis shows that enlistment as a whole including Aboriginal enlistment had begun to falter by 1917 and continued to do so and most Aboriginal men volunteered in 1915 and 1916.

 Attestations show too that only a small percentage, about 12% came from missions and reserves  – one reason for this being the expulsions from missions and from farms occupied on promisory Protection Board leases which took place in NSW (the state contributing most enlistments), following the 1909 Aborigines Protection Act.

The records also do not support the contention that there was an overtly high proportion of race related rejection although this does not preclude the use of subterfuges to mask rejections based on race. While a small number of men may have used other ethnicities to try to secure enlistment, the majority as far as the records show did not.

Some Aboriginal men, from information in their service records and other sources did become RSSILA (later the RSL) members – although the question of their admission to the social and other activities of the League was uncertain and the RSSILA’s ongoing attitude on balance was a tepid and qualified on (see for instance Riseman and Trembath, Defending Country Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Service since 1945 (2016), 50.)

Some men are also recorded in the press and elsewhere as marching on Anzac day although disincentives may have existed across the spectrum of country towns and some capitals. However none of this was ‘official’ as so often implied by the story tellers.

Similarly soldier settlement blocks were received by more than the one or handful sometimes still routinely said to have been their only recipients. My research with Christine Cramer shows In New South Wales alone from a comparison of known Aboriginal service men with records held by State Records, that twenty out of twenty seven applicants had their applications approved, although this success was mostly not replicated in their subsequent history. Photographic and documentary sources including soldier settlement files suggests that at least fifteen physically presented as Aboriginal, including eleven of the successful.

Post-war repatriation benefits were not formally denied and were received by some as evidenced in repatriation records and pension documents in service records but it is likely that others found the unofficial obstacles underpinned by race insurmountable and may not have applied.

Most of these examples result from a conflation of the official position with the discriminatory racist atmosphere prevailing before, during and in the years following the war and in turn relate to ongoing Aboriginal awareness of the essence of past experience although not its detail. But while official policy did not encompass discrimination, the bitter feelings of Aboriginal families testify that unofficially discrimination loomed large in all aspects of the pre and post-war experience of Aboriginal men.

The other telling reason for discrepancy in the story, particularly in some scholarly publications, is the impact of the information provided by the progressive identification of the service of Aboriginal men. An idea of the advances made in these numbers can be gained by referring to updates on this blog. These expanded numbers can radically affect and alter interpretations and analyses with the result that early conclusions reached based on limited numbers now cannot be sustained. 

Overall the picture which emerges differs from that portrayed in popular writing and in a number of cases in scholarly works, which with some honourable exceptions can be guilty of at least one of these generalisations and sometimes more. While many of the errors relate to a misapprehension of the source of the undoubted disadvantages experienced by Aboriginal men – the misapprehension itself reaffirms the existence of the racist society Aboriginal men served in and returned to.

However it can’t be empathised enough that attempting to set the record straight as in the forgoing commentary in no way diminishes Aboriginal service or negates the fact that it took place in the face of discrimination and an all-enveloping prejudiced society. What is clear, from examination of their records and related documents, is that despite the racist society they grew up in and continued to endure (as did their families) both before, during and then post-war, Aboriginal men volunteered freely to fight for their country in an horrendous conflict and did so with distinction, gallantry, personal physical and emotional injury and loss of life. It is fitting on Anzac day to reflect on this and to commemorate them and to celebrate the fact that their service is at last acknowledged.

 Philippa Scarlett 

25 April 2024