Please be aware that this page contains images of people who are now deceased. It also contains words, terms and descriptions which may be culturally sensitive and are considered inappropriate today, but which reflect the period in which they were written.
During World War I, approximately 1,000 men of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage enlisted in the AIF. They served at Gallipoli, in the Middle East and in Western Europe, with perhaps as many as 90 being killed in action or dying from wounds and illness. A number were decorated for gallantry. However, until recently the Indigenous Diggers have been almost completely ignored and forgotten.
In addition to serving in the armed forces, on the home front, Indigenous people were also involved in the various patriotic activities which were organized to raise funds for the war effort. Indigenous entertainers frequently appeared in wartime patriotic carnivals, giving corroborees and displays with traditional weapons, whilst on the reserves and missions, Indigenous people held fund raising dances and events. This too has largely been ignored and forgotten.
Of all the Indigenous Diggers who served in the AIF during World War I, Douglas Grant was perhaps the only one who became widely known to the Australian public at the time. During the war Grant was the subject of a number of newspaper articles and he was also mentioned in several news items and letters from troops serving overseas which were published in the press. His departure for Europe in 1916 gained widespread attention in the metropolitan and regional newspapers, which in turn inspired one Bulletin contributor to write a humorous poem titled 'The Black Watch', in which a bagpipe playing Grant is imagined as the secret weapon to end the war.
It is of course telling, that within the enormous body of creative literature which World War I has inspired, to date, Indigenous Diggers have featured in only a handful of works.
Jack Hibberd's 1984 play Captain Midnight V.C. has as the central character, Captain Midnight, a World War I V.C. winner, who is the illegitimate son of an Indigenous woman and an English peer. In the play, Midnight leads an uprising which results in whites being expelled from Tasmania, which is then returned to Aborigines as `Trugininiland’.
Archie Weller has written several works which involve World War I, including the poems 'Unknown Soldier', 'My Love's Sweet Dance', 'For all the Gods to Laugh', and 'Possum', and the short stories 'The Poppies Grow in Flanders Fields' and 'Spirit Woman'. Of these, only 'Possum', 'The Poppies Grow in Flanders Fields' and 'Spirit Woman' specifically involve Indigenous Diggers, though in all these works there is a sense in which Indigenous Diggers are present.
Black Diggers, written by Tom Wright and directed by Wesley Enoch, is a contemporary Queensland Theatre Company production which explores the lives of the Indigenous Diggers, who although not recognized as Australian citizens and officially barred from joining the Australian military forces, nevertheless volunteered and served in the AIF during World War I.
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