On April 25 a group of Neo-Nazi protestors booed Uncle Mark Brown’s Welcome to Country at the Melbourne Anzac Day Shrine service. To their credit the RSL promptly said they would continue with Welcomes to Country.

The protestors seemed to come from the same cohort of Australians who opposed the Howard era gun buy backs complaining that the government shouldn’t take their guns away because they might need them to defend Australia. As Keith Payne VC said at the time: “If they want to defend the country they ought to join the Army – if they can pass the psych test.”

To put some context the events it is worth looking at the life and sacrifice of one Indigenous soldier.

On 20 September 1917, 21-year-old Private Daniel Cooper, killed in the Battle of Menin Road in Belgium, was buried at Perth Cemetery (China Wall) Ypres Belgium.

On 6 December 1938, Daniel’s father William Cooper, when he heard the news about Kristallnacht, in which Nazis attacked Jews and their property all over Germany, he led an Australian Aborigines Advancement League delegation to deliver a letter of protest to the German consul in Melbourne. The delegation was not allowed into the consulate, so the letter was left with a guard. (Cooper’s grandson, Alfred Turner, delivered a copy of the letter to German officials at the Australian Embassy in Berlin in 2017.)

While the RSL Anzac Day Welcome to Country strong defence was good news, the story of First Nations representation involvement in our many wars is not so well recorded

As a commemorate plaque in Shepparton, erected by the local Council, Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation, the Rumbalara Cooperative and the Shepparton RSL records: “At the time of WWI, when young men were flocking to enlist, Australia’s Defence Act of 1903 actually forbade Aboriginal people from representing Australian in war.” There were somewhere between 800 and 1000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands served during WWI although the records are not complete.

It should also be remembered that First Nations stockmen didn’t get equal pay either until after the Wake Hill dispute in the Whitlam era.

The plaque also records that once the WWI veterans were back in Australia, they faced discrimination including exclusion from the Soldier Settler Land Grants and were denied membership of the RSL.

In WWII some 3000 First Nations people served and were again refused rights given to other men and women who served while parcels of Aboriginal land were allocated to other returned servicemen. Troops in Indigenous units received roughly half the pay of other troops and it was not until the 1980s that back pay was paid.

Since then, First Nations soldiers have served in the Korean War, Malaysia Emergency, Borneo, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Celeste Liddle, writing in crikey (29/4) said the booing at the Anzac Day was not an aberration but a symptom of deeper sickness. Her grandfather, Harold, served for more than five years in Darwin and various South-East Asian theatres but was never legally considered a citizen.

Liddle says that, needless to say, Peter Dutton never misses an opportunity to promote divisiveness. She writes: “The sad thing is, there are votes in fuelling this ignorance. Peter Dutton twisted himself into a pretzel chasing the racist vote by first condemning the booing – indicating Welcomes were an important part of the proceedings and acknowledging Indigenous service people – before backtracking on Monday by suggesting Dawn Services did not warrant a Welcome ceremony, saying that the day should be about ‘our veterans.’”

Meanwhile the Trumpet of Patriots’ endless prime time ads misrepresent the Welcome to Country meaning in line with Trump’s anti-woke agenda.

The plaque also includes a quote from Mick Dobson: “If you fight for your country, it owes you equality. If you fight for freedom, you should be entitled to that freedom too.”

Those words are also apposite for the Australian War Memorial which has consistently refused to acknowledge the fight for freedom involved in the Australian Wars – the Frontier Wars – Australia’s first, deadliest and longest war. So far, the AWM has agreed to provide a tiny proportion of a new gallery while also agreeing to acknowledge warriors who fought in the Frontier Wars if they subsequently served in uniform.

As Liddle writes: “It’s tiring, it’s deceitful, and while many Indigenous people have fought for this country, I’d wager they sure as hell did not fight for this to be its future.”

Meanwhile the Rationalist Society of Australia continues its fight for the War Memorial and other Anzac commemoration organisations to meet with non-religious veterans. It is a myth that there are no atheists in foxholes, and it is a myth that we are a Christian society, let alone a religious one, as less than half the population says they are religious. It would be even less if the RSA proposal about the wording of the Census religious question offered clearer.

The RSA reports that Melbourne’s Dawn Service was largely a secular affair, with no religious chaplain participating and no prayers offered. At the AWM, Adelaide, Perth and Sydney chaplains presided over large sections of the service and there were numerous acts of Christian worship including the recital of the Lords’s Prayer.

The RSA reports that Shrine had once again written to the AWM and the dawn services Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth and Sydney raising the issue. Only Brisbane responded and acknowledged the concerns while in March the AWM turned down a request for a meeting.

RSA Executive Director Si Gladman, said that the AWM and other organisers needed to listen to the concerns of the public and non-religious veterans. “Anzac Day is not a Christian day of commemoration. It’s a national day for all Australians. It’s incredible that our national War Memorial’s Dawn Service and commemorations in other capital cities fail to reflect this.”

The blog’s friend Gary Max brought the Shepparton Cooper Memorial plaque to its attention. The author is Secretary of the Defending Country Memorial Project Inc and a member of the Rationalist Society of Australia.