Douglas Grant

Douglas Grant (1885 – 4 December 1951) was an Aboriginal Australian soldier, draughtsman, public servant, journalist, public speaker, and factory worker. During World War I, he was captured by the German army and held as a prisoner of war at Wittenberg, and later at Wünsdorf, Zossen, near Berlin.

Early life and career Grant was born around 1885 into the rainforest Indigenous Nations of north Queensland near Malanda on the Atherton Tablelands. Grant's repatriation file (Service Number 6020) records his birth as 5 January 1887.

In 1887, as an infant orphaned as a result of a massacre of Aboriginal people by the Native Police during the Australian Frontier Wars, he was 'rescued' by taxidermists Robert Grant and E.J. Cairn, who were in the region on a collecting expedition for the Australian Museum. The Aboriginal child was later fostered and renamed Douglas by Robert Grant and his wife Elizabeth. Then, contrary to the laws of the time they smuggled him aboard the steamer ship 'Barcoo' from Cairns, Queensland, across state jurisdictions and eventually to Lithgow, New South Wales. There, he lived with the extended Grant family until Robert and Elizabeth moved, together with their son Henry, to another Scottish diaspora community in the Sydney suburb of Annandale, New South Wales.

World War One

Grant first joined the Australian Army at Scone on 13 January 1916. Grant completed training with the 34th Battalion, but was discharged because indigenous people were officially barred from military service. However, as the number of possible recruits dwindled, such legal barriers were increasingly ignored by recruiters. Grant re-enlisted in August 1916 and was sent to France to join the 13th Battalion. Douglas Grant was one of more than 1,000 Indigenous men who served in World War I.

On 11 April 1917, during the First Battle of Bullecourt, Grant was wounded and captured. He was first sent to Wittenberg, where POWs received very small amounts of rations. Douglas Grant's POW colleague Harry Adams later remembered their experience in the Wittenberg camp, also recalling Grant's wit and sense of humour:"We had been here about three or four months. We weren't getting very much food, so Doug with others he used to go sick with the idea of getting the doctor to declare them unfit for further laborious work around the front. The doctor, on examining him [Douglas] said 'You don't look sick!' Doug said, 'What have I got to do – turn white ... before you can tell whether I'm sick or not?' While at Wittenberg Grant was noticed by social scientists from the Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission which had been established by the psychologist and musicologist Carl Stumpf, and by linguist Wilhelm Doegen, to study the languages and culture of the men held captive as German prisoners of war. Grant was transferred to the Wünsdorf POW camp and like many of the colonial soldiers from the British and French empires there, he became an object of study as part of this major research project. German doctors, scientists, anthropologists and artists sought to examine and document him. One German scientist argued that the POW camps were "a völkerschau [people show] without comparison", and Grant later told his war colleague Roy Kinghorne that "he was measured all over, and upside down and inside out". The German sculptor Rudolf Marcuse modelled Grant's bust in bronze, and this significant work was only re-discovered by researchers in 2015. A number of the men selected as part of this 'Jihad' scheme would have been known to Douglas Grant, who was given the task of supporting the wellbeing of British colonial troops within his role as President of the British Help Committee.

On 22 December 1918, Grant was repatriated from Germany to England. He took the opportunity to visit his adoptive fathers' family in Scotland. Grant was able to mimic a Scottish accent and attracted much attention in Scotland.

Grant became a sought-after public speaker, giving lectures on numerous subjects including the experience of war, Aboriginal rights, and the significant role of women in society.

A significant piece of journalism by Grant was published in a major Sydney newspaper, the Sunday Pictorial, on February 3 1929. The article, titled A Call for Justice, and argued that the 1928 Coniston Massacre represented a 'wake-up call' for all Australians and 'a great unparalleled crime'. Grant wrote: 'What can we do and what are we doing for the first inhabitants, the rightful owners of this land which was usurped and portioned as your heritage, the outcome of war and bloodshed? The government has to awaken and take measures to ensure the lives of the remnants of Australia’s original inhabitants'. Grant continued this public service advocacy and media work throughout his life, and much later, while living in Lithgow, he was also a regular guest on radio 2LT Lithgow's Diggers Show. A number of commentators, such as the historian John Maynard, have described Grant's effort to establish connections between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities as that of a cultural 'bridge-builder'. Grant remained at Callan Park Hospital from 1931 until 1939, during which time he designed and built a replica of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a memorial to the ‘fallen’ of WW1 that is still standing today. He also engaged in sporting activities such as golf and bowls, ran errands, and spent occasional afternoons drinking in the nearby Balmain and Rozelle pubs, much to the annoyance of his nurses. Grant also lived with former WW1 colleagues such as Peter Holburn, and also lived at the Salvation Army's old men's quarters at Dee Why, New South Wales. After 1950 Grant lived at the Bare Island War Veteran's Home in La Perouse, New South Wales.

In the arts and media Grant's life was the subject of a 1957 Australian radio feature on the ABC.

A character in the play Black Diggers, written in 2013 and staged in January 2014, is based on Grant. Journalist and author Paul Daley wrote a long article about Grant in the March 2015 edition of Meanjin, later republished in The Guardian.

In 2021 the University of Newcastle historian John Ramsland published a fictionalised biography of Grant, entitled The Legacy of Douglas Grant: A Notable Aborigine in War and Peace.

A number of radio and television documentaries have been made about Grant by the filmmaker and academic Tom Murray, including an ABC Radio National feature in 2017, and later screened by SBS Television and NITV. A song from the film inspired by Grant's life, "Ballad of the Bridge Builders", co-written by Murray and David Bridie and performed by Archie Roach, won the APRA Award for Best Original Song Composed for the Screen. Ursula Yovich performed the song at the 2020 Awards Ceremony.