The role of Aboriginal servicemen and women has only recently been brought to the forefront of conversation about Australia’s war history. This important book makes a key contribution to recording the role played by Indigenous Australians in our recent military history. Written by two respected historians and based on a substantial number of interviews with Indigenous war veterans who have hitherto been without a voice, it combines the best of social and military history in one book. This will be the first book to focus on this previously neglected part of Australian social history.

Defending Country: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Military Service Since 1945

History

Riseman, Noah

Trembath, Richard

Americas

University of Queensland Press

In the campaign against Japan in the Pacific during the Second World War, the armed forces of the United States, Australia, and the Australian colonies of Papua and New Guinea made use of indigenous peoples in new capacities. The United States had long used American Indians as soldiers and scouts in frontier conflicts and in wars with other nations. With the advent of the Navajo Code Talkers in the Pacific theater, Native servicemen were now being employed for contributions that were unique to their Native cultures. In contrast, Australia, Papua, and New Guinea had long attempted to keep indigenous peoples out of the armed forces altogether. With the threat of Japanese invasion, however, they began to bring indigenous peoples into the military as guerilla patrollers, coastwatchers, and regular soldiers.
Defending Whose Country? is a comparative study of the military participation of Papua New Guineans, Yolngu, and Navajos in the Pacific theater. In examining the decisions of state and military leaders to bring indigenous peoples into military service, as well as the decisions of indigenous individuals to serve in the armed forces, Noah Riseman reconsiders the impact of the largely forgotten contributions of indigenous soldiers in the Second World War.

Defending Whose Country?: Indigenous Soldiers in the Pacific War

University Of Nebraska Press

Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War

During the Second World War, Indigenous people in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada mobilised en masse to support the war effort, despite withstanding centuries of colonialism. Their roles ranged from ordinary soldiers fighting on distant shores, to soldiers capturing Japanese prisoners on their own territory, to women working in munitions plants on the home front. R. Scott Sheffield and Noah Riseman examine Indigenous experiences of the Second World War across these four settler societies. Informed by theories of settler colonialism, martial race theory and military sociology, they show how Indigenous people and their communities both shaped and were shaped by the Second World War. Particular attention is paid to the policies in place before, during and after the war, highlighting the ways that Indigenous people negotiated their own roles within the war effort at home and abroad.

Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War: The Politics, Experiences and Legacies of War in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

Sheffield, R. Scott

Cambridge University Press

<div>Most people have heard of the United States' infamous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, yet few know about Australia's own history of LGBT military service. In Serving in Silence? lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender servicemen and women share their personal stories for the first time. The book explores the emotional stress they experienced hiding their sexuality or gender identity under official bans, as well as the challenges facing those who have served openly in the last 25 years. &nbsp;</div>

Serving in Silence?: Australian LGBT servicemen and women

Robinson, Shirleene

Willett, Graham

Australia & Oceania

University of New South Wales Press

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Books by Riseman, Noah