In April 2025, as tens of thousands gathered at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance to honour those who served and sacrificed for Australia, the solemn pre-dawn silence was shattered. Not by the Last Post, but by boos and jeers.
Neo-Nazis and far-right extremists heckled Uncle Mark Brown, a Bunurong and Gunditjmara man, as he delivered a Welcome to Country. Later, when images of First Nations servicemen and women were projected onto the Shrine, they were met with more contempt.
The very people who claim ANZAC Day as sacred, demanding reverence from all Australians, could not muster basic respect for the First Peoples whose ancestors fought and died under the same flag.
The irony would be laughable if it weren't so profoundly tragic.
These are the same voices that insist Australia Day must never be moved, that any acknowledgement of First Nations people is 'divisive', that reconciliation is a threat to Australian identity. Yet here they were, dishonouring the memory of Indigenous ANZACs on the one day they claim is untouchable.
If ANZAC Day truly represents the values of courage, sacrifice, and mateship, then the hypocrisy on display at the Shrine was nothing short of a desecration.
This incident isn't an isolated event. It's a symptom of a deeper problem: a deliberate refusal to reckon with the full truth of Australia's history, and a wilful ignorance about the contributions First Nations people have made to this country, not just in war, but in every generation since colonisation began.
The Forgotten ANZACs: A History of Service and Sacrifice
Let's start with what most Australians simply do not know. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have served in every conflict Australia has been involved in since Federation in 1901. In fact, some served in colonial forces even before that, including in the Boer War (1899–1902). Over 1,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people served in World War I, with around 70 fighting at Gallipoli. At least 3,000 Aboriginal and 850 Torres Strait Islander people served in World War II. In both World Wars, Indigenous Australians had the highest participation rates in the military as a proportion of their population.
Despite facing systemic racism, exclusion, and marginalisation at home, First Nations people enlisted in greater numbers, proportionally, than any other group.
In 1944, nearly every Torres Strait Islander man was a member of the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion. In proportion to population, no community in Australia contributed more to the war effort in World War II than the people of the Torres Strait Islands. Meanwhile, in 1942, the first Japanese Prisoner of War captured in Australia was taken by Aboriginal people after his plane crashed on Melville Island, north of Darwin. Aboriginal soldiers formed the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit, using traditional tactics and knowledge to defend the country's north. Today, NORFORCE, which relies heavily on the knowledge and skills of local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, monitors the largest area of operations of any military unit in the world.
More than 800 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians currently serve with distinction in the Australian Defence Forces. There are up to 7,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander veterans and war widows in the Australian community today.
These are not footnotes. These are the foundations of Australia's defence history.
Barriers, Discrimination, and the Courage to Serve Anyway
For much of the 20th century, it was illegal for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to enlist. Laws at the time stated that people "not substantially of European origin or descent" were prohibited from serving. Despite this, over 3,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women are known to have enlisted in World War II alone, and a further 400 in World War I. Many hid their identity. Others travelled to different recruitment centres after being rejected. Some were allowed to enlist only when the need for soldiers became desperate, and recruitment standards were quietly relaxed.
Restrictions on enrolment based on race were not officially removed until 1949.
Think about that. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were fighting and dying for a country that legally considered them unfit to serve. A country that, in many states, did not even count them as citizens. A country that operated under the White Australia Policy, which sought to exclude all non-Europeans from entering or participating fully in national life.
So why did they go?
For some, it was the promise of equality. In the armed forces, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander soldiers were treated the same as their non-Indigenous counterparts. They lived in the same conditions, fought in the same units, and were paid the same wages. Whilst racism still existed, many reported being treated better in the military than they ever were at home. For others, it was the promise of full citizenship rights upon return, or access to education and employment opportunities otherwise denied to them.
As the legendary poet, activist, and World War II veteran Oodgeroo Noonuccal put it: "I joined the Australian Women's Army Service because it was also a good opportunity for an Aboriginal to further their education. In fact, there were only two places where an Aboriginal could get an education, in jail or the Army, and I didn't fancy jail!"
The Promises That Were Never Kept
When the wars ended and First Nations servicemen and women returned home, they found the same discrimination, or worse, waiting for them.
Aboriginal veterans were routinely denied access to schemes designed to support returned soldiers. The Soldier Settlement Scheme, for example, was meant to provide land and employment to veterans. In reality, only one Aboriginal man is known to have ever received land under the scheme. In some cases, Aboriginal land was seized and redistributed to non-Indigenous soldiers under this very programme. Communities are still fighting to have this redressed.
Aboriginal veterans were denied access to Returned and Services League (RSL) clubs. They were refused military funerals. In some cases, their service pensions were quarantined. After the Boer War, it is believed that Aboriginal men who had served were denied re-entry to Australia under the immigration restrictions of the White Australia Policy.
Let that image settle: men who fought for Australia, locked out of the country they defended.
Uncle William Cooper, a respected Aboriginal leader during World War II, opposed fighting in European wars when Aboriginal people were treated so appallingly at home. He also led one of the only protests in the world against the Nazi regime's treatment of Jewish people in the 1930s. His moral clarity was profound: how could Australia ask Aboriginal people to fight fascism abroad when it practised segregation and dispossession at home?
The Blurred Lines: How History Is Weaponised
Australian history, as it has been taught in schools and told in public discourse, has long blurred the distinction between two very different narratives: the colonial version and the First Nations version. In the colonial story, Australia is a nation built on mateship, democracy, and egalitarianism. In the First Nations story, Australia is a place where sovereignty was never ceded, where massacres were commonplace, where children were stolen, and where laws were designed to erase an entire people.
Both are true. But only one has been consistently elevated, while the other has been dismissed, minimised, or ignored.
This blurring is not accidental. It is a tactic used to create confusion and division. When First Nations people ask for acknowledgement, through a Welcome to Country, a change to Australia Day, or constitutional recognition, they are painted as divisive. As though asking for the truth is somehow un-Australian. As though wanting to be seen in the history you helped build is a threat.
The far-right extremists at the Shrine of Remembrance are the loudest expression of this tactic, but they are not its only perpetrators. The same logic underpins media narratives that frame Aboriginal Australians as problems to be solved rather than peoples to be respected. It underpins the resistance to the Voice to Parliament, to treaty, to truth-telling. It underpins the idea that reconciliation is 'woke' rather than overdue.
And it works, in part, because most Australians don't personally know any Aboriginal people. According to various studies, the majority of non-Indigenous Australians have little to no contact with First Nations communities. Their understanding of Aboriginal people comes almost entirely from the media, and the media often delivers a politicised, incomplete, and damaging version of who First Nations people are.
The Pattern: First Nations People Always Turn Up
Here is what the historical record shows with painful consistency: despite every attempt to vilify, exclude, eradicate, and erase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, whenever Australia has asked them to contribute, they have turned up. Every time.
They turned up for the Boer War. They turned up for World War I and World War II. They turned up for Korea, for Vietnam, for Iraq, for Afghanistan, for peacekeeping missions in Somalia and East Timor. They turned up to build infrastructure during the wars. They turned up to defend the northern coastline. They continue to turn up today.
And when they came home, many were told they weren't Australian enough. They were denied land, denied recognition, denied respect. They were locked out of RSL clubs. They were left out of history books. Their images were booed at the Shrine of Remembrance.
The same cannot be said of all non-Indigenous Australians. Not all have stood up when it mattered. Not all have extended the same grace, courage, or sacrifice.
Honouring the Truth
In recent years, there has been progress. Memorials to Aboriginal soldiers have been erected in Adelaide, Warrnambool, and Mildura. In 2018, after a long fight, the Aboriginal flag was flown at ANZAC Hill in Alice Springs for the first time. Families of First Nations veterans have worked tirelessly to bring their stories into the light.
But recognition is not enough. Symbolism without structural change is hollow. The Voice to Parliament, which Australians voted down in 2023, was an opportunity to right historical wrongs and give First Nations peoples a say in the policies that affect their lives. It was a chance to honour the legacy of the Forgotten ANZACs not with plaques, but with power. Not with words, but with action.
As one advocate put it: "Australia failed our Forgotten ANZACs by not recognising them upon their return or caring for them the same way they did non-Indigenous servicemen and women. Constitutional recognition through the Voice to Parliament is a chance for Australians to be on the right side of history."
A Different Kind of Courage
It is also worth remembering that not all First Nations people supported military service. Many resisted. Many saw, and continue to see, the contradiction in fighting for a country that has waged war against their own people since 1788.
Frontier violence, dispossession, and massacres are rarely recognised as war in Australia, despite meeting every definition. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander resistance fighters are not honoured at dawn services. Their courage is not commemorated with marches or medals.
This, too, is part of the story. And it deserves respect.
What We Owe
So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a choice. We can continue to allow history to be weaponised, to let far-right extremists define what it means to be Australian, to permit the media to shape a version of First Nations people that serves political agendas rather than truth. Or we can do the harder, braver thing: learn the full story, sit with the discomfort, and make space for a version of Australia that includes everyone who built it.
First Nations ANZACs did not serve this country so their descendants could be booed at the Shrine of Remembrance. They did not fight for a nation that would deny their existence, their contributions, or their rightful place in the story.
They fought for something better. They still are.
It's time the rest of Australia caught up.
If we are serious about honouring the ANZAC spirit, courage, sacrifice, mateship, then we must extend that same spirit to the First Peoples of this land.
Anything less is not patriotism. It's cowardice.
