Serving Our Country

Indigenous Australians, war, defence and citizenship

Joan Beaumont, Alison Cadzow

• Publisher: NewSouth
• Year: 2018
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781742244174
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

After decades of silence, Serving Our Country is the first comprehensive history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's participation in the Australian defense forces. While Indigenous Australians have enlisted in the defense forces since the Boer War, for much of this time they defied racist restrictions and were denied full citizenship rights on their return to civilian life. In Serving Our Country, Mick Dodson, John Maynard, Joan Beaumont, Noah Riseman, Alison Cadzow, and others, reveal the courage, resilience, and trauma of Indigenous defense personnel and their families, and document the long struggle to gain recognition for their role in the defense of Australia.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Note on terminology
• 1. Serving Our Country
• 2. Race, citizenship and military service
• 3. The South African ‘Boer War’
• 4. The First World War
• 5. The home front in the First World War
• 6. The rise of the modern Aboriginal political movement 1924–39
• 7. Australian military forces in the Second World War
• 8. Labour and surveillance in northern Australia, 1939–45
• 9. The Second World War home front
• 10. Opening the military door, 1945–65
• 11. The Vietnam War
• 12. Servicewomen
• 13. Ex-service activism after 1945
• 14. North-West Mobile Force
• 15. The Australian Defence Force, 1990s to 2017
• 16. Commemoration
• Appendix 1. Serving Our Country Yarn Ups and Interviews
• Appendix 2. Commemoration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander military service
• Contributors
• Notes
• Index