This year's NAIDOC theme is "Serving Country: Centenary and Beyond," to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have served in Australia's armed forces since the 1860s but only now are they slowly being acknowledged.
“Everybody thought there was not enough for us to talk about but now that research has been done in the last 10 years, it's not just one or two indigenous Australians who served, it's literally thousands, so the time is right to push for a national memorial,” said Gary Oakley, Indigenous liaison officer of the Australian War Memorial.
“National memorials can only be ticked by the prime minister.”
The National NAIDOC Committee, that sits within the responsibility of the prime minister’s office, agrees.
“I think it's time that we all step forward as a nation and redress this. It's a great opportunity and I would call upon the Australian government to take this into consideration,” said Anne Martin, NAIDOC Committee co-chair.
“We wanted the nation to know about the contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their role in defence of this country through out history, from the frontier wars onwards and I don’t think it’s been very well reflected in our history and it seemed like a wonderful opportunity to honour these people who have served our country and continue to serve our country.”
The prime minister's office was unable to provide a response to SBS about whether it supported the proposal or not.
'A secret history'
The first recorded Aboriginal in uniform was Thomas Bungalene, who enlisted in the Victorian Navy 1863.
Since the Boer War, thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders have fought for Australia and hundreds have paid the ultimate price for a country that once did not even recognise them as citizens.
“It’s been a secret history, most people don’t know about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service in the defence force. We went away and served and came back to community and vanished,” said Gary Oakley.
“When ANZAC day came along you couldn’t march and that skewed people’s perception of how may indigenous Australians served because they didn’t see black faces marching on ANZAC day.”
South Australia last year became the first state to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander veterans with an official war memorial, one is planned for Sydney and the Queensland government is next month expected to announce it will erect a memorial in Anzac Square in Brisbane.
“I’ve spoken to a number of vets and they’re very excited there’s going to be a memorial set up somewhere in Brisbane, … and the non-indigenous brothers that I talk to, the veterans, they also support the concept too,” said Vietnam veteran Vern Hopkins, co-chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Dedicated Memorial Committee of Queensland.
"We're not here to segregate from our brothers and sisters who we served with, we're here to have our people recognised who fought for this land, even though they were not recognised as the first people of the land."
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