Our Mob Served - ANU

First Nations telegraph

https://www.firstnationstelegraph.com/socialour-mob-served-launched--a-vivid?utm_campaign=first_nations_telegraph_daily_update_tuesday_2_april_2019&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=2019-04-01

Also see AWM flicker online

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Anzac Parade, 25 April 2018

The book “Serving our Country” was launched at Gleebooks, Sydney on 19 July. Karen Mundine of Reconciliation Australia convened a conversation about the book with co-editor Joan Beaumont and Community Consultation Coordinator of the project, Craig Greene. Good audience and great discussion and Q&A.

One of the major outcomes of the 'Serving our Country' research project is a book, Serving our Country: Indigenous Australians, war, defence and citizenship, which has just been published by NewSouth Publishing. Edited by Joan Beaumont and Allison Cadzow, the book provides a definitive and comprehensive account of Indigenous military service, including all major conflicts of the 20th century, the Protection Acts, the home fronts in the two world wars, women in military service, the ADF today, Indigenous activism after military service, and commemoration. The authors would like to thank all those who made this book possible by sharing their memories of war and military service with us. For further details see

Serving our Country After decades of silence, Serving Our Country is the first comprehensive history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s participation in the Australian defence forces. While Indigenous Australians have enlisted in the defence forces since the Boer War, for much of this time they defied ...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-30/battle-of-beersheba-indigenous-soldiers-remembered/9098636

Battle of Beersheba: Indigenous soldiers remembered Up until recently, there has been little recognition of the Aboriginal men who fought in a battle that helped forge a national Australian identity.

Upcoming seminar at ANU on Monday 9 October at 6pm, click on the link below for all the details and to register.

Soldiers not Citizens: Indigenous service in the Australian defence forces 1899-2017 In the past century, little was known of the service of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders Australians in the Australian defence forces. This was largely because for many decades the obligation to serve the nation was placed only on those men who were substantially of European origin...

Over 145 participant profiles and interviews are now accessible on the Serving Our Country website @ http://ourmobserved.anu.edu.au/yarn-ups/yarn-participants and there will be more posted over the coming months.
Community Yarn Ups held around the country were a vital part of the Serving Our Country Project and these oral history recording sessions were structured to allow individuals to tell their story, their way, and many of these recorded histories are now easily accessible through our website and they help present a richer, deeper history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders military service in Australia from the Boer War to the present day.

WWII RAAF veteran Len Waters included in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
Leonard Victor Waters (Len) (1924–1993), shearer and airman, was born at Euraba Aboriginal Mission near Boomi, New South Wales … Len enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in 1942 and trained as an aircraft mechanic … Concerned that his limited education would frustrate his ambition to fly, Waters studied hard to compensate. He applied for a transfer to aircrew in June 1943 … On 14 November 1944 Waters joined No. 78 Squadron on the island of Noemfoor, Netherlands New Guinea (Indonesia). The next month the squadron relocated to Morotai, Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), where he was allocated a Kittyhawk that the previous pilot had named ‘Black Magic.’ He found the coincidence amusing and retained the name. In January 1945 he was promoted to flight sergeant, his commanding officer reporting that he had adapted quickly to operational flying and was a ‘good solid type, popular with his fellow pilots’ … During nine months active service Waters flew a total of ninety-five sorties, mostly ground attacks. On one mission over Celebes (Sulawesi), his plane was struck by a shell that did not detonate but embedded behind the cockpit near a fuel tank. When returning to base he alerted ground staff to the danger, later recalling that it was ‘the smoothest landing I’ve ever made’ … Read more on our website: http://ourmobserved.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/620/wwii-raaf-veteran-len-waters-included-australian-dictionary-biography

WWII RAAF veteran Len Waters included in the Australian Dictionary of Biography Leonard Victor Waters (Len) (1924–1993), shearer and airman, was born on 20 June 1924 at Euraba Aboriginal Mission near Boomi, New South Wales … Len enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) on 24 August 1942 and trained as an aircraft mechanic … Concerned that his limited education would fr...

The lost souls of Condah who joined the Anzacs - Tony Wright for Fairfax Press.

A bad season was coming … when the boys from Condah began trooping off to the recruiting office … Lake Condah shrank to a puddle. Eel and fish traps, some of them constructed by Indigenous residents on the lakeshore 1000 years before the first of the pyramids were built, were left high and dry. It would be remembered as the great drought of 1914-15. It would be remembered for something worse. The start of the Great War … the war would leave lasting scars upon Condah, just as it did on every other district, town and city in Australia. Condah, however, was not quite the same as every other Australian district. Of the 42 men who marched away from little Condah, 14 of them – a third of the total – were known in the vernacular of the time as blackfellas.

Read more on our website: http://ourmobserved.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/616/lost-souls-condah-who-joined-anzacs

The lost souls of Condah who joined the Anzacs A bad season was coming. Drought was slinking from the north when the boys from Condah began trooping off to the recruiting office … Lake Condah shrank to a puddle. Eel and fish traps, some of them constructed by Indigenous residents on the lakeshore 1000 years before the first of the pyramids were…

'Facing Two Fronts: the fight for respect' and 'Indigenous Australians at War from the Boer War to the Present'. Two new exhibitions are opening at the National Archives of Australia this week, read all about them on our website @ http://ourmobserved.anu.edu.au/news-events/all-stories And while you are there, explore our growing collection of 'Serving Our Country' participant profiles and video interviews @ http://ourmobserved.anu.edu.au/yarn-ups/yarn-participants

Aboriginal WWI digger to be brought home

Australian Associated Press reports today that an Aboriginal WWI soldier whose remains have lain in an unmarked grave in Adelaide for nearly a century will be reburied near his home with full military honours.

Twenty-five-year-old digger Miller Mack died in 1919 from an illness contracted during service and was buried in an unmarked grave at the West Terrace Cemetery.

Read the full story on our website:

ourmobserved.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/568/aboriginal-wwi-digger-be-brought-home