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RSL to remember Aboriginal Soldiers

By Brian Williams

24 July 2006 - LEADING Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson said yesterday it made him nauseous to see young Australians celebrate Anzac Day but ignore what had happened to indigenous people.

The RSL yesterday agreed with Mr Pearson that Aboriginal soldiers had been under-appreciated.
Mr Pearson said Anzac Day celebrations were too white.

He said he felt alienated because his two grandfathers fought in France in World War I but were not classed as Australian citizens when they returned.

Mr Pearson told the Earth Dialogues forum in Brisbane: "I'm an Australian but not necessarily a proud one.
"I'm too troubled about the place of my indigenous people in this, their own country, to just simply say 'I'm a proud Australian'. And the 'Oi, oi, oi' is just embarrassing.

"I consider few things more honourable in citizens than service in the armed forces. But on Anzac Day, which is the subject of a growing patriotic identification on the part of younger generations of Australians, I feel a faint nausea.

"I feel alienated because I find it hard to stomach the sight of white Australians saying 'Lest we forget' at the shrines of Anzacs while vigorously seeking to forget what happened to the country's indigenous people."
RSL national president Bill Crews said yesterday Mr Pearson was right that the ignoring of Aboriginal soldiers was a blight on Australia's history.

Maj-Gen Crews said he did not know how many Aborigines had fought as soldiers but that they had done so courageously even though they could not vote and were not counted in the census.

To try to make amends, the RSL has started an Aboriginal scholarship and will ensure more references to their contribution as soldiers.

"I'm sorry Pearson feels the way he does, but he's made a valid and telling point, and I commend him for making it," Maj-Gen Crews said.

Mr Pearson also told the forum that the campaign against political correctness in Australia over the past decade had come to be a licence for yobbo-like insensitivity and chauvinism.

Source: Herald Sun

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