Roles Of Aboriginals In WWI

Roles of Aboriginals in WWI
The Aborigines (Australian Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders) involved in WWI are commonly unrecognised as significant contributions to the war in contemporary times, as in the war period the Aboriginals were thought poorly of as ‘lesser’ human beings. Many indigenous individuals disliked the British and European Australians for their violent history, as well as the constant conflict the two kinds had against each other (ever since the first colonies). It would be assumed that nearly no indigenous people would have volunteered into the white man’s war, not to mention committing the same violence the European Australians were involved in. Contrary to popular belief, a number of both Aboriginals and Torres Strait…show more content…
Instead of commonly being sent to a ‘Settler’s Blocks’ under the agreement of the ‘Returned Servicemen’s Settlement Scheme’ (sections of land distributed to ex-servicemen for mainly agricultural use), they were given nothing, just because the white public wanted them to. Not only did the distribution of land affect the returned indigenous, but even the non-contributing Aboriginals, as the land the government was claiming for the scheme was Aboriginal Reserve Land, meaning that Aboriginals were forced to leave the land they had been settled on for decades. This left them with no money and nowhere to go. Not only taking away their land, the government continued to pick on indigenous Australians by creating the “Protection Acts” to, again, separate the blacks from the whites to ‘protect’ them. Even worse, based on public consensus, the Commonwealth Government agreed to legislate the entitlement of Aboriginal servicemen to be disregarded of their veteran…show more content…
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