THE contribution aboriginal diggers have made to the Australian armed forces is often overlooked.
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Since the first Boer War in 1880 thousands of indigenous Australians have served in all major conflicts.
See photos from last year's Anzac Day Service...click here
Great Lakes College student to travel to Europe on Anzac scholarship...click here
While they were not given citizenship until 1968, the armed forces was one area where aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders experienced less discrimination and were more accepted by the wider community.
According to the Australian War Memorial, more than 400 indigenous Australians served in the Great War (WWI)
However, in a recently released ibook, Black Anzacs the number was more likely 1000 indigenous men enlisted with the Australian Infantry Forces (AIF) in WWI despite the Defence Act of 1903 which rejected ‘colour ‘because they were not ‘substantially of European descent’.
To overcome this fact, many indigenous people pretended to be Maori, Indian, Portuguese or Pacific Islander.
According to Forster WWI descendent, Elvina Oxley, history says indigenous diggers went to war for king and country.
“The reality is Tobwabba men followed each other out of the family camp to enlist from father to son, brother to uncles,” she said.
“And these decisions started with our great uncles joining up in the imperial forces of WWI.”
Fifteen members from the Great Lakes Tobwabba Aboriginal Reserve and four men from the Worimi tribal boundary enlisted, many never to return home.
Charles Cunningham, Henry ‘Harry’ Cunningham and James Alexander Slater, who lived in Wang Wauk at the time joined their brothers.
Sadly, James Slater, who enlisted in the 20th battalion, was killed in action in 1918 during the battle of the Somme and buried in Warley-Baillon Cemetery in France with another well-known Tuncurry identity, Cecil Allard, who was killed in 1916.
Like many returned soldiers William ‘Nipper ‘Simon arrived home a shell shocked and broken man, possibly suffering what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Many lived the rest of their lives in stifling misery and often drowned their traumatised lives in alcohol.
Family members were at a loss with what to do, and found it extremely hard to communicate and understand the nature of their relatives’ transformed life.
Nipper’s daughters kept their feelings close about the way the Great War had impacted the family, taken their land, their home and their father away, even though he returned physically.
The eldest daughter didn’t speak about her dad, and Nipper’s youngest and last surviving child, Miriam, now 80, knew little about her father.
“I knew nothing of my father,” she said.
“I never knew him; I was too young, I was a small child,” she said.
“The memory of just one thing remains from those days and that was a lovely frock I had to wear,” she said.
This brief memory Miriam has of her dad is shared with her permission.
To celebrate the contribution of the often overlooked contribution of indigenous servicemen is the newly released free multitouch ibook, Black Anzacs.
Designed to bring a fresh insight to school students, the book offers a perspective through the eyes of William Williams.
He was one of more than a thousand indigenous men who enlisted in the AIF.
Paul Greenwood, principal at Wagga Wagga’s Riverina Environmental Education Centre which produced the ibook, said he hoped Black Anzacs would broaden the understanding of the foundations of a rich tradition of aboriginal people serving Australia through the armed forces.
“William Williams and the other ‘Black Diggers’ who marched with him were brave pioneers in many ways,” Mr Greenwood said.
“Not only did they share the spirit and bravado of their Anzac comrades as they went to battle overseas, but they also battled against the tide of society at home.
“Black Anzacs is more than a war story.”