Armistice Day 2018: brief reflections

Armistice Day is always a day for reflection, but today it is particularly so being the centenary of the Armistice which ended the ‘war to end all wars’.

There has been a surfeit of media coverage and thoughtful commentary, which I won’t attempt to summarise or repeat. It seems to me that setting aside time (and a place) for a minute’s silence is a better way for us all to reflect on the events of a century ago, and the consequences and reverberations, good and bad….

My purpose today is merely to point to two Indigenous related publications related to Indigenous veterans. The first, which I am yet to see, was mentioned on the ABC Radio’s Awaye! program yesterday (link here) and will be screened on NITV tonight. It is Erica Glynn’s documentary Truth be Told: Lest we Forget and will no doubt be available on SBS on-demand.

The second is a publication of The Aboriginal History Research Services at the West Australian Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries titled No Less Worthy. Here is a link to WA Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Ben Wyatt’s media release, and here is a link to the publication.

The book documents the experiences and subsequent lives of 80 Aboriginal men who volunteered to serve in the Australian armed forces in World War One. It also documents a further 53 men who volunteered but were denied permission to serve for one reason or another. Many were rejected o the grounds that they were ‘Not of European origin or descent’. At the time, there was a legislative restriction on Aboriginal men serving in the armed forces, so those who did manage to serve in each case overcame the formal restrictions.

The book is thought provoking on many levels, perhaps most poignantly in terms of providing a window into the lives of so many individual Australians, men of their time, who faced extraordinary challenges right throughout their lives. In particular, the book documents the hardships many volunteers suffered upon their return. In a similar vein, in a blog post in April 2016, I remembered a South Australian Gallipoli veteran, Ben Murray (link here).

The common thread between Truth be Told and No Less Worthy is the way in which they document how the nation’s our institutional frameworks operated to exclude Aboriginal men from joining and most particularly operated upon their return to exclude them from full participation in Australian society. While on active service, Aboriginal soldiers were apparently mostly respected as comrades by their non-Indigenous mates. But this meant very little upon their return.

My current research is focussed on the ongoing levels of institutional exclusion which operate in Australia. Like the nation’s approach to returned Aboriginal soldiers, institutional exclusion is generally difficult to identify and recognise, and operates in ways which most of us are unable to see.

I recommend readers have a read of No Less Worthy, and watch Truth be Told if you can. But in reflecting on the consequences of World War One and the century which followed for Aboriginal volunteers,  it is worth also thinking about whether there are similar institutional dynamics at play today which deny Indigenous Australians (and other disadvantaged groups) full access to the benefits of Australia’s extraordinary economic and social system.