Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War: The Politics, Experiences and Legacies of War in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand by R. Scott Sheffield and Noah Riseman (review)

i have been waiting to read a book like this for decades. A rich historiography on Indigenous peoples and the world wars has emerged since the 1980s, illuminating myriad ways that these conflicts affected individuals, families, and nations. While early waves of writing focused on "forgotten soldiers," recent scholarship has broadened the scope to include the home front as well. Weaving together various strands of experience in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War makes a major contribution to the historiography on Indigenous peoples and Indigenous-state relations in the twentieth century.

History professors Scott Sheffield (University of the Fraser Valley, Canada) and Noah Riseman (Australian Catholic University) have produced an accessibly written and thoroughly engaging monograph that is theoretically informed and empirically rich. A natural companion piece to Timothy Winegard's Indigenous Peoples of the British Dominions and the First World War, it represents a more integrated form of transnational and comparative history. Where Winegard narrated developments in each dominion as distinct sections in temporally organized chapters, Sheffield and Riseman adopt a thematic approach that brings examples from all four countries into continuous dialogue. They produce a remarkably unified story, but one that also reflects national nuances of both Indigenous nations and the settler states.

The book begins with concise overviews of Indigenous peoples' experiences with European settler colonialism in the four countries up to 1900, organized around defining features of confrontation, carceration, and assimilation. The narrative then transitions to introducing Indigenous war service from 1900 to 1945, introducing why subjugated peoples would agree to send sons and daughters to fight alongside their colonizers. Subsequent chapters on the Second World War in particular provide rich insight into myriad forms of military service, motivations for voluntary enlistment, and experiences in military life. Alongside examples of cultural shock, acculturation, and assimilation, the authors offer strong examples of acceptance and respect by non-Indigenous comrades and superiors who came to judge Indigenous personnel "on their ability and character rather than their Indigeneity" (131). In the chapter "Mobilising Indigeneity," the authors reveal how militaries drew upon Indigenous knowledge, languages, and cultures in well-known forms, such as the Navajo Code Talkers and Maori Battalion, as well as in lesser-known examples of differentiated service, such as the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion in Australia and the Pacific Coast Militia Rangers in Canada. They carefully explain shifting power relationships, emphasizing Indigenous agency without losing sight of how entrenched colonial structures limited Indigenous peoples' control in negotiating relationships with states.

The book embraces the "war and society" turn in military historiography, elucidating varied home front experiences, including ongoing discrimination, trauma, urbanization, fundraising, and forced evacuations, with sensitivity to gendered dynamics and distinct patterns in remote regions. A fascinating chapter also analyzes how Indigenous peoples contested imposed forms of engagement, including conscription of Indigenous men, lands, and labor, which reinforced how "the ability of each Indigenous community and population to influence the settler state was finite and situational, often even more so in wartime conditions than during peacetime" (233).

The third section looks at "homecomings," as Indigenous communities transitioned from war to peace. Both authors have written extensively on veterans, and the chapter on this subject is one of the strongest in the book, explaining how unequal treatment and access to benefits showed "the continuing limits of acceptance and the circumscribed inclusion of Indigenous peoples in national social citizenship" (239). The following chapter discusses how postwar reconstruction brought "a substantial upswing in politicisation and activism" (298) promoting reformist ideas but yielding mixed results in terms of Indigenous policy reform. Thus, while the war provided a "glimpse of equality" and "produced conditions for genuine re-evaluation of the relationship between Indigenous peoples and settler states, it fundamentally did...