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Scholarly and testimonial evidence from Armenian, English, French, German, and Turkish sources document the gendered ways by which the Ottoman Empire utilized mandatory military service — conscription — as a tool to carry out genocide during the First World War. Recruitment and deployment policies empowered Ottoman conscripts to commit crimes while simultaneously authorizing the capture and destruction of Armenian men and boys. Given the obfuscations that arose amid the war’s normalized carnage, it is crucial to note that the intent to destroy and the method of capture that Ottoman perpetrators used existed prior to the demise of their targets. Due to the empire’s gendered necropolitical exploitation of Armenians, combined with the precedent of the draft as a way to raise armed forces, assemble forced labourers, and punish men deemed insubordinate to imperial leaders, the era’s mass loss of life continues to offer some observers a way to erroneously excuse and deny this case of genocide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous veterans have been celebrated for their achievements in the two world wars, adding needed texture to Canada's half-century at war. However, Indigenous peoples on the home front have remained periphery to the study of Indigenous peoples' experiences of the world wars, leaving veterans and military eligible men as the main protagonists in the story. Those individuals left on reserve experienced the conditions of war, the mobilization of the Canadian state for war, and the enlistment of Indigenous men into the army differently than enlisted men. Analyzing Indigenous petitioners' political advocacy during the First World War and the Second World War offers a more textured and complex representation of Indigenous peoples' experiences during the world wars. By negotiating their place within the settler Canadian state, while also clearly defining their sovereignty and distinct political cultures, Indigenous peoples remained active participants in the political arena during the period from 1914 to 1945. Rather than "awakening" politically on the return of veterans in response to broken promises, Indigenous peoples on the home front deployed and evolved existing political tools and strategies to articulate their responses to wartime policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]