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Aboriginal Australians and the Home Front

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Australians and the First World War

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Abstract

During the First World War more than 1,000 Aboriginal men served in the Australian Imperial Force, despite military regulations which prohibited volunteers who were “not substantially of European origin or descent.” The valuable contribution of these Aboriginal soldiers has increasingly been recognised by historians, and in public commemoration of the war, but less attention has been paid to the “home front” experiences of the vast majority of Aboriginal people who remained in Australia. This chapter provides a general overview of Aboriginal Australians and the Home Front, focusing on the themes of wartime employment, government Aboriginal policy, imperial loyalty, repatriation, and soldier settlement.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “An Aborigine on the War,” Advertiser (Adelaide), 28 August 1914.

  2. 2.

    See, for example, Chris Clark, “Aborigines in the First AIF,” Australian Army Journal, no. 286 (1973): 21–6; David Huggonson, “The Dark Diggers of the AIF,” Australian Quarterly 61, no. 3 (1989): 352–7; Rodd Pratt, “Queensland’s Aborigines in the First Australian Imperial Force,” in Aboriginal Peoples and Military Participation: Canadian and International Perspectives, eds. P. Whitney Lackenbauer, R. Scott Sheffield and Craig Leslie Mantle (Kingston, Ontario: Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2007).

  3. 3.

    Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013), xvi.

  4. 4.

    Ernest Scott, Australia During the War, vol. 11, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1936).

  5. 5.

    See, for example, Michael McKernan, The Australian People and the Great War (Melbourne: Nelson, 1980); Melanie Oppenheimer, All Work, No Pay: Australian Civilian Volunteers in War (Walcha, NSW: Ohio Productions, 2002); Michael Tyquin, Madness and the Military: Australia’s Experience of the Great War, Australian Army History Collection (Loftus, NSW: Australian Military History Publications, 2006); Marina Larsson, Shattered ANZACs: Living with the Scars of War (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009); Beaumont, Broken Nation.

  6. 6.

    John Connor, Peter Stanley, and Peter Yule, The War at Home, vol. 4, Centenary History of Australia and the Great War (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2015), 198–200.

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Richard Broome, Aboriginal Victorians: A History since 1800 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005); Peter Biskup, Not Slaves, Not Citizens: The Aboriginal Problem in Western Australia, 1898–1954 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1973); Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996); Anna Haebich, For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia, 1900–1940, 2nd ed. (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 1992).

  8. 8.

    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): 183–201; 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): 203–22; Patricia Grimshaw and Hannah Loney, “‘Doing Their Bit Helping Make Australia Free’: Mothers of Aboriginal Diggers and the Assertion of Indigenous Rights,” Provenance, no. 14 (2015): http://prov.vic.gov.au/publications/provenance/provenance2015/doing-their-bit.

  9. 9.

    Timothy C. Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions and the First World War, Cambridge Military Histories (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 218–28. See also Thomas A. Britten, American Indians in World War I: At Home and at War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 132–58.

  10. 10.

    Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions, 61.

  11. 11.

    Quoted in ibid., 87.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 60–7.

  13. 13.

    See, for example, Gordon Charles Naley, in They Served With Honour: Untold Stories of Western Australian Aboriginal Servicemen at Gallipoli, ed. Department of Aboriginal Affairs (Perth: Department of Aboriginal Affairs, 2015), 30–1.

  14. 14.

    Pratt, “Queensland’s Aborigines,” 225; Noah Riseman and Timothy C. Winegard, “Indigenous Experience of War (British Dominions),” 1914–1918-Online: International Encyclopaedia of the First World War, 2.1, accessed 19 October 2016, http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/indigenous_experience_of_war_british_dominions.

  15. 15.

    Riseman and Winegard, “Indigenous Experience of War,” 2.2.

  16. 16.

    Military Order 200, part 2, quoted in Pratt, “Queensland’s Aborigines,” 222. See also “Enlistment of Half-Castes,” Age (Melbourne), 21 May 1917.

  17. 17.

    Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions, 97.

  18. 18.

    Quoted in Philippa Scarlett, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Volunteers for the AIF: The Indigenous Response to World War One, 2nd ed. (Canberra: Indigenous Histories, 2012), 4.

  19. 19.

    “An Aboriginal Soldier,” Farmer and Settler (Sydney), 2 May 1916.

  20. 20.

    Huggonson, “The Dark Diggers,” 353. See also: Timothy C. Winegard, “A Case Study of Indigenous Brothers in Arms during the First World War,” Australian Army Journal 6, no. 1 (2009): 191.

  21. 21.

    “Recruiting Director-General,” Daily Mail (Brisbane), 24 April 1917.

  22. 22.

    “Aboriginal Warriors,” Sydney Morning Herald, 28 June 1915. See also: “Aboriginal Soldiers,” Queensland Times (Ipswich), 16 November 1915.

  23. 23.

    Northern Territory of Australia, “Report of the Administrator for the Year 1914–15,” 28, in To Remove and Protect database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, accessed 26 October 2016, http://aiatsis.gov.au/collections/collections-online/digitised-collections/remove-and-protect. Unless otherwise specified all further state or territory-based protection reports are sourced from the To Remove and Protect database.

  24. 24.

    Pratt, “Queensland’s Aborigines,” 223–4.

  25. 25.

    J.W. Bleakley, quoted in Noah Riseman, “Enduring Silences, Enduring Prejudices: Australian Aboriginal Participation in the First World War,” in Endurance and the First World War: Experience and Legacies in New Zealand and Australia, eds. David Monger, Katie Pickles and Sarah Murray (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 183.

  26. 26.

    “Aboriginal Recruits,” Brisbane Courier, 20 June 1917.

  27. 27.

    B2455, WILLIAMS G, National Archives of Australia, Canberra. See also Huggonson, “The Dark Diggers of the AIF,” 352.

  28. 28.

    See, for example, Clark, “Aborigines in the First AIF,” 22; Heather Goodall, “Not Such a Respected Soldier: The Impact of World War 1 on Aborigines in New South Wales,” Teaching History 21, no. 4 (1987): 3; Pratt, “Queensland’s Aborigines,” 236.

  29. 29.

    Scarlett, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Volunteers, 9.; At the time of writing, researchers at the AWM are continuing to find new cases of Indigenous enlistment, which makes it very difficult to pinpoint numbers.

  30. 30.

    These statistics are based on an earlier estimate of 580 Aboriginal servicemen. See Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions, 230–1.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 237.

  32. 32.

    Chris Clark, “Thorpe, Harry (1886–1918),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/thorpe-harry-8800/text15433, published first in hardcopy 1990, accessed online 19 October 2016.

  33. 33.

    Connor, Stanley, and Yule, War at Home, 12–17.

  34. 34.

    New South Wales, “Report of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines for Year 1914,” 3.

  35. 35.

    New South Wales, “Report of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines for Year 1915,” 2.

  36. 36.

    Anna Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families 1800–2000 (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000), 182–3.

  37. 37.

    South Australia, “Report of the Protector of Aborigines for the Year Ended June 30, 1915,” 3.

  38. 38.

    Peggy Brock, Outback Ghettos: Aborigines, Institutionalisation and Survival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 89. See also South Australia, “Report of the Protector of Aborigines for the Year Ended June 30, 1917,” 15.

  39. 39.

    South Australia, “Report of the Protector of Aborigines for the Year Ended June 30, 1916,” 14; South Australia, “Report of the Protector of Aborigines for the Year Ended June 30, 1917,” 17.

  40. 40.

    Brock, Outback Ghettos, 89.

  41. 41.

    Queensland, “Annual Report of the Chief Protector of Aboriginals for the Year 1914,” 4; Queensland, “Annual Report of the Chief Protector of Aboriginals for the Year 1915,” 5.

  42. 42.

    Raymond Evans, Loyalty and Disloyalty: Social Conflict on the Queensland Home Front, 1914–18 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 96. See also “Aboriginal Labour Suspended,” Cairns Post, 7 November 1916.

  43. 43.

    Queensland, “Annual Report of the Chief Protector of Aboriginals for the Year 1918,” 4.

  44. 44.

    Dawn May, Aboriginal Labour and the Cattle Industry: Queensland from White Settlement to the Present (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

  45. 45.

    Biskup, Not Slaves, Not Citizens, 109.

  46. 46.

    Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, 202–3.

  47. 47.

    New South Wales, “Report of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines” (1920), 3.

  48. 48.

    See, for example, “A Plea for the Blacks,” Hamilton Spectator (Vic), 6 August 1917.

  49. 49.

    Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions, 237–9.

  50. 50.

    Haebich, Broken Circles, 182–3.

  51. 51.

    John Maynard, Fight for Liberty and Freedom: The Origins of Australian Aboriginal Activism (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007), 39.

  52. 52.

    South Australia, Progress Report of the Royal Commission on the Aborigines; Together with Minutes of Proceedings, Evidence, and Appendices (Adelaide: R.E.E. Rogers, Government Printer, 1913), 37.

  53. 53.

    Robert Foster, “‘Endless Trouble and Agitation’: Aboriginal Activism in the Protectionist Era,” Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, no. 28 (2000): 22–4. See also Doreen Kartinyeri, Ngarrindjeri Anzacs (Adelaide: Aboriginal Family History Project, South Australian Museum and Raukkan Council, 1996), 24–5.

  54. 54.

    Alan Powell, Far Country: A Short History of the Northern Territory (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1982), 161; Haebich, Broken Circles, 191.

  55. 55.

    Northern Territory of Australia, “Report of the Administrator for the Year 1914–15,” 28.

  56. 56.

    “Aboriginal Soldiers,” Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW), 7 March 1915.

  57. 57.

    Biskup, Not Slaves, Not Citizens, 153–5.

  58. 58.

    For details on the fraud associated with this scheme, see David Huggonson, “Aboriginal Trust Accounts in Queensland: How ‘Protection’ Became ‘Oppression,’” Australian Quarterly 62, no. 4 (1990): 367–8.

  59. 59.

    Queensland, “Annual Report of the Chief Protector of Aboriginals for the Year 1918,” 4.

  60. 60.

    Queensland, “Annual Report of the Chief Protector of Aboriginals for the Year 1919,” 4; Pratt, “Queensland’s Aborigines,” 232.

  61. 61.

    Patricia Grimshaw, Elizabeth Nelson, and Sandra Smith, Letters from Aboriginal Women in Victoria, 1867–1926 (Melbourne: History Department, University of Melbourne, 2002), 251–3.

  62. 62.

    Jan Critchett, “Rawlings, William Reginald (1890–1918),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rawlings-william-reginald-8161/text14263, published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 19 October 2016.

  63. 63.

    Evans, Loyalty and Disloyalty, 40.

  64. 64.

    “Country Efforts,” Brisbane Courier, 31 August 1915.

  65. 65.

    “Aboriginal Patriotism,” Telegraph (Brisbane), 18 October 1915.

  66. 66.

    “Empire Day,” Echuca and Moama Advertiser and Farmers’ Gazette, 29 May 1915.

  67. 67.

    New South Wales, “Report of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines for Year 1915,” 4.

  68. 68.

    Connor, Stanley and Yule, War at Home, 199.

  69. 69.

    “Viscount Jellicoe’s Great Welcome,” Register (Adelaide), 26 May 1919.

  70. 70.

    “Of Interest to Women,” Sydney Mail, 7 April 1915; New South Wales, “Report of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines for Year 1915,” 3–4.

  71. 71.

    Queensland, “Annual Report of the Chief Protector of Aboriginals for the Year 1916,” 3, 12.

  72. 72.

    Pratt, “Queensland’s Aborigines,” 226.

  73. 73.

    Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions, 221.

  74. 74.

    Mark Newman, Sally Lawrence and Philippa Scarlett, The Boys from Barambah: The Story of the Black Diggers of Barambah–Cherbourg of World War 1 (Murgon: Ration Shed Museum, 2015), 21.

  75. 75.

    Jimmie Barker and Janet Mathews, The Two Worlds of Jimmie Barker: The Life of an Australian Aboriginal, 1900–1972 (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1977), 87.

  76. 76.

    “Empire Day.”

  77. 77.

    “Aboriginal Soldiers,” Register (Adelaide), 2 August 1919.

  78. 78.

    See, for example, “Aboriginal Welcome Home,” Queanbeyan Age, 12 September 1919; “Soldiers of the North,” Daily Observer (Tamworth), 16 May 1919.

  79. 79.

    Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions, 247; Clem J. Lloyd and Jacqueline Rees, The Last Shilling: A History of Repatriation in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 107; Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996), 75.

  80. 80.

    Lloyd and Rees, Last Shilling, 107; Gerrard and Harman, “Lives Twisted Out of Shape,” 198.

  81. 81.

    Andrea Gerrard, “Open to All Who Served or Was It? Soldier Settlement for Tasmanian Aboriginal Soldiers,” Tasmanian Historical Studies 20 (2015): 29, 38.

  82. 82.

    Simon Flagg and Sebastian Gurciullo, Footprints: The Journey of Lucy and Percy Pepper (Melbourne; Canberra: Public Record Office Victoria; National Archives of Australia, 2008), 57–78, 100.

  83. 83.

    David Huggonson, “Aborigines and the Aftermath of the Great War,” Australian Aboriginal Studies, no. 1 (1993): 7.

  84. 84.

    Haebich, For Their Own Good, 224.

  85. 85.

    Goodall, Invasion to Embassy.

  86. 86.

    Huggonson, “Aborigines and the Aftermath,” 7; Horton, “‘Willing to Fight,’” 205.

  87. 87.

    “A Plea for the Blacks.”

  88. 88.

    “Aborigines’ Rights,” Portland Guardian (Vic), 20 July 1925.

  89. 89.

    Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions, 239.

  90. 90.

    Maynard, Fight for Liberty, 18–19; Diane Barwick, “Cooper, William (1861–1941),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooper-william-5773/text9787, published first in hardcopy 1981, accessed online 19 October 2016.

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  • Winegard, Timothy C. Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions and the First World War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

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  1. Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Samuel Furphy

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  1. University of Newcastle , Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia

    Kate Ariotti

  2. University of Newcastle , Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia

    James E. Bennett

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Furphy, S. (2017). Aboriginal Australians and the Home Front. In: Ariotti, K., Bennett, J. (eds) Australians and the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51520-5_9

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