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ABSTRACT
The literature on Indigenous participation in the Second World War from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand has tended to portray Indigenous soldiers as exceptionally able and courageous in battle. While heart-warmingly laudatory and an understandable product of genuine evidentiary challenges in researching this subject, the image constructed is partial and unrealistic. At best it is misleading; at worst it conflates indigeneity and combat proficiency in ways that reinforce racial stereotypes of Indigenous people as ‘natural’ warriors prevalent during the war. This article argues that we discard the exceptionalism enshrouding Indigenous combat performance in favour of a more culturally nuanced approach.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Noah Riseman, Monty Soutar, Whitney Lackenbauer and Kirsten Sheffield for feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, which helped to improve the end product. Any errors are mine alone.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Welby Lloyd Patterson, Military Medal Citation, File 2004-01505-5, Vol. 52, RG24, Libraries and Archives Canada (hereafter LAC).
2 Dick Patrick, Military Medal Citation, File 2004-01505-5 Vol. 52, RG24, LAC.
3 Tommy Prince has been the subject of a number of biographies, but the most comprehensive and nuanced is Lackenbauer, ‘“A Hell of a Warrior”’, 27–78. Bryce has not been the subject of a biography, but his story is presented in Gaffen, Forgotten Soldiers, 53–55, as well as Summerby, Native Soldiers, Foreign Battlefields, 23–25.
4 See, for example, Davison, ‘We Shall Remember Them’; Dempsey, ‘Alberta’s Indians and the Second World War’, 39–52; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (hereafter RCAP), Report of the RCAP, ch. 12.
5 For example, Childers’ exploits are mentioned in Townsend, World War II and the American Indian, 129; Ngarimu is described in detail by Gardiner, Te Mura o te Ahi, 115–17; Reg Saunders has had many accounts published of his life, including the Gordon, The Embarrassing Australian.
6 Cody, 28 (Maori) Battalion. The early wave of scholarly interest in the subject included: Gaffen, Forgotten Soldiers; Orange, ‘Exercise in Maori Autonomy’, 156–72; Gardiner, Te Mura o te Ahi; Hall, Black Diggers ; Holm, ‘Fighting a White Man’s War’, 69–81; Bernstein, American Indians and World War II.
7 Noah Riseman explores the development of these various national historiographies in, ‘Rise of Indigenous Military History’, 901–11. Much of this more recent literature is moving away from exceptionalism, though not all. For scholarly publications, see, from New Zealand, Soutar’s excellent, Nga Tama Toa ; Hill, State Authority/Indigenous Autonomy. In the United States, Townsend and Franco provide a good complement to Bernstein for surveys, and a substantive additional literature is also available. Townsend, World War II and the American Indian; Franco, Crossing the Pond . An important new contribution in Australia is Riseman, Defending Whose Country?. In Canada, important works include: Stevenson, ‘Mobilisation of Native Canadians’, 205–26; Sheffield, ‘“Of Pure European Descent”’, 8–15; Sheffield, A Search for Equity; Sheffield, The Red Man’s on the Warpath; Poulin, Invisible Women; Lackenbauer, Battle Grounds.
8 Gaffen, Forgotten Soldiers, 39.
9 Streets, Martial Races, 7.
10 Grey, Military History of Australia, 35.
11 Total numbers enlisted in the Great War are approximately 1,000 Aboriginal Australians, 4,000 First Nations, 8,000 Native Americans and 2,668 Māori. For the broader story of Indigenous military service in the Great War, see Britten, American Indians in World War I, Winegard, For King and Kanata ; Pugsley, Te Hokowhitu a Tu.
12 See Pugsley, Te Hokowhitu a Tu. There was an experiment with recruiting two battalions primarily from Indigenous populations in Canada in 1916, but neither was able to make its quotas from solely Indigenous recruits, and only the 107th Battalion actually saw service as a Pioneer Battalion in France in 1917. Bell, ‘The 107th “Timber Wolf” Battalion’, 73–78.
13 Winegard, Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions, 259.
14 In Canada particularly, the Saskatchewan Indian Veterans Association and other Indigenous veterans’ organisations initiated research and a campaign for recognition of their service and grievances over veterans’ benefits in the late 1970s. Sweeney, ‘Government Policy and Saskatchewan Indian Veterans’.
15 Gaffen, Forgotten Soldiers, 80.
16 Hall, Black Diggers, 194.
17 This was especially noteworthy in Davison’s MA thesis and her contributions to the RCAP chapter on veterans, as well as in the historical overview of the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. Davison, ‘We Shall Remember Them’; RCAP, Report of the RCAP; Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, ‘The Aboriginal Soldier after the Wars’, 7–10.
18 In Canada, the First Nations veterans campaign for recognition finally bore fruit in 1999–2001, when the National Round Table on First Nations Veterans Issues was formed, bringing together First Nations veterans groups, the Assembly of First Nations and the federal departments of Veterans Affairs, Defence and Indian and Northern Affairs. Sheffield, A Search for Equity. A more recent campaign for congressional recognition of Native American Code Talkers in the United States was likewise pressed by veterans and their communities. Meadows, ‘North American Indian Code Talkers’, 161–213. In Australia, Torres Strait Islanders sought redress for the unequal pay they had received during the Second World War, though it took until 1983 for the Australian government to accept responsibility for the injustice and provide back pay in 1983–84. Shnukal, ‘Torres Strait Islanders’.
19 The section on veterans’ issues is in RCAP, Report of the RCAP, vol. 1, ch. 12.
20 Lackenbauer and Sheffield, ‘Moving beyond Forgotten’, 209–32.
21 On integration, see Sheffield, ‘“Of Pure European Descent”’, 8–15; Bernstein, American Indians and World War II, 40–41; Hall, Black Diggers, 189. Most New Zealand studies focus heavily on the Maori Battalion, but a substantial number of Māori service personnel served outside that segregated unit in the army, as well as in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and Royal New Zealand Navy. McGibbon, ed., with Goldstone, Oxford Companion 309.
22 For Australia, Bob Hall makes clear the vagaries of the government records when he speculates that ‘perhaps more than 3000’ Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders enlisted, and another 150–200 more served in a de facto capacity (not all formally enlisted). Hall, Black Diggers, 189. In Canada, there were formal and often-quoted numbers of 3,050 Status Indian recruits for the Second World War, based on Indian Affairs documents, which officials admitted were incomplete. In fact the real figure was between 4,200 and 4,300, based on the cross-referencing of case files between the Department of National Defence, Veterans Affairs Canada and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada for the National Round Table process in 1999–2001.
23 This is best demonstrated by the extraordinarily rich oral and private collections that provided the basis for Soutar, Nga Tama Toa.
24 A good example is Franco, Crossing the Pond, which, despite its title, barely touches on the war experiences of Native American soldiers; instead, the author focuses on the home front, particularly in the American southwest.
25 Strachan, ‘The Soldier’s Experience’, 379.
26 Ellis, ‘Reflections on the “Sharp End”’, 14.
27 Holmes, Acts of War, 10.
28 Euclide Boyer, interview in Linnen, ed., Remembrances, 21–22.
29 Medicine Crow described this process in a video production, ‘History of Native American Military Service’, CSPAN 3, http://www.c-span.org/Events/History-of-Native-American-Military-Service/10737426478/ (accessed 4 March 2013).
30 Dempsey, ‘Alberta’s Indians and the Second World War’, 42.
31 Hall, Fighters from the Fringe, 78–79.
32 Bernstein, American Indians and World War II, 44.
33 Ibid., 45–46.
34 Ellis, At the Sharp End, 97–98.
35 Carleson, You Are Asked to Witness ; Riseman, Defending Whose Country?.
36 On the Code Talkers, see Paul, The Navajo Code Talkers; Aaseng, Navajo Code Talkers; McClain, Navajo Weapon ; Meadows, Comanche Code Talkers. The conditions in New Zealand, where much Māori service was concentrated into the Maori Battalion, produce a broader source base because not only are Māori ex-servicemen easier to locate, most belong to the Battalion’s veterans’ organisation and remained engaged in collective memory production. The result is a rich source base which underpinned Soutar’s book on ‘C’ Company, 28th (Maori) Battalion, Nga Tama Toa.
37 Lackenbauer, ‘A Hell of a Warrior’; Stabler, No One Ever Asked Me ; Awatere, Awatere: A Soldier’s Story.
38 Lackenbauer, ‘A Hell of Warrior’, 65.
39 Hall, Fighters from the Fringe, 71.
40 Paul, The Navajo Code Talkers, 81.
41 De Lee touches on these shared responses in ‘Oral History and British Soldiers’ Experience’, 359–68.
42 Townsend, World War II and the American Indian, 143.
43 Soutar, Nga Tama Toa, 148–49. A taiaha was a traditional Māori melee weapon, with a point at one end and flattened to a broad heavy blade at the other, used like a quarter staff, and warriors practised spinning it in intricate series of manoeuvres and footwork (‘mea’).
44 Meadows, ‘North American Indian Code Talkers’, 168–69.
45 Carroll, Medicine Bags and Dog Tags, 121–22.
46 Soutar, Nga Tama Toa, 185. Operation Crusader was a major British offensive in North Africa in November 1941.
47 Aaseng, Navajo Code Talkers, 55–56.