A proud and dignified Coloured Diggers March wound its way through Redfern on Gadigal Country on April 25, after a series of organised racist disruptions at earlier ANZAC Day events.
At several ANZAC Day dawn services earlier that day, First Nations elders leading Welcome to Country/Acknowledgement of Country ceremonies were booed by racists.
It echoes the blatant racism faced by First Nations and Pacific Islander soldiers after they returned from World War I and World War II, as well as the refusal to acknowledge the Frontier Wars.
First Nations people were good enough to risk and sacrifice their lives for White Australia in its imperial wars but not accepted back as equals on their own land.
Many of these “coloured” veterans were not allowed into the Returned and Services League (RSL), never offered assistance and some even denied back pay owed for their service.
Recent research has also identified six Solomon Islander men who served in the Australian Army alongside First Nations soldiers in the Northern Territory during WWII to return home to not being eligible for any veteran’s benefits, or official acknowledgement of their service.
There was no acknowledgement of First Nations war veterans in the official ANZAC Day commemorations until 2017.
There is still no acknowledgement of the genocidal frontier wars.
Military veteran and pastor Uncle Ray Minniecon, a descendant of the Kabi Nation and the Gureng Nation of South-East Queensland, and a descendant of the South Sea Islander people with strong connections to his people of Ambrym Island, initiated the Coloured Diggers March through Redfern on ANZAC Day in 2007.
This ANZAC day, Uncle Ray was booed by some in the crowd at the dawn service at the Cenotaph in Hyde Park, but he persevered with his address.
Later he told ABC News: “I think they’ve got to understand that this always was and always will be Aboriginal land.”
“We have experienced this type of racism now for over 230 years. What crime did we commit to attract this kind of racism and this kind of hate?”
NSW Police arrested a 24-year-old man for “an alleged act of nuisance” during the service, with several others moved on.
In Boorloo/Perth, police issued move-on orders to several activists from the far-right March For Australia group at the dawn service.