It was around 89 years after their service that Boandik Gunditjmara Elder Uncle Johnny Lovett knocked on the doors of the Australian War Memorial demanding why his father and uncles weren't on the record.

The answer? They were Aboriginal.

"They came back to their country at Lake Condah Mission to find it had been cut up into soldier settlement blocks given to five non-Aboriginal returned soldiers, and they got nothing," Mr Lovett said. "They were back to being Black.

"This story, as big as it is, has been kept so long and buried so deep that if I hadn't found it, I don't think anyone would have been sitting here at all talking about it."

Four of the five Lovett brothers, originally from Lake Condah in Victoria's south-west, were not only Indigenous soldiers but the only four diggers known to have served in both World Wars.

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Mr Lovett has spent his whole life demanding justice for his forebears, and the fight has just become a whole lot more complicated.

With the help of Adelaide-based human rights and native title lawyer Tim Campbell, Mr Lovett has discovered he may not technically be an Australian citizen by law; which means his father before may not have been either.

Mr Lovett was born one year before the Australian Citizenship Act 1948, which essentially does not apply retrospectively to Aboriginal people born before the act came into place.

It begs a whole range of questions about the enlistment of Aboriginal soldiers and compensation owed to them, Mr Campbell said.

"John asked us to look at whether or not he was an Australian citizen and our opinion is that he's not," he said.

"That is particularly important in terms of his concern about his father and uncles serving in World War I, and the fact that Australia has a history of asking Aboriginal people to become soldiers in World War I and World War II when at that stage, they were not Australian citizens.

"They fought for Australia, returned to Australia and it is well-documented that most Aboriginal soldiers who returned, returned to a state where they weren't recognised by the Australian Constitution, they were not part of the Census, they were not Australian citizens.

"They were not given any rights as returned soldiers to the lands that were allocated to returned soldiers.

"One aspect of that, of course, was that the land had been taken from the Lovett ancestors and of course, then they came back, and weren't even entitled to any land as returned soldiers.

"So it was racist, it reflected the times, and certainly took until 1967 for Australia to recognise something in law about this, but it's still unresolved.

"Some governments have addressed the issues of Stolen Generations and that is still something that Australians are learning about; but the next move will be stolen wages and stolen land not returned.

"If our opinion is right, we still have Aboriginal Australians who are in their 70s and 80s, who are not Australian citizens but were born here."

Mr Campbell said Mr Lovett's may be the first of many cases.

The citizenship opinion has been sent to Wannon MP Dan Tehan, who has failed to respond to Mr Lovett or The Standard's questions on the matter.

It was also sent to federal Immigration Minister Alex Hawke.

Mr Hawke declined to answer questions from The Standard, redirecting enquiries to the Department of Home Affairs.

The department rejected Mr Lovett's opinion in a statement:

"The Department does not agree with legal opinion supplied by Mr Lovett," it reads.

Mr Campbell said it points to wider racism that still exists in legislation today.

"The conclusion is that they forgot about Australian Aboriginals, they did not have that regard and that's representative of the racist attitude we still have to Australian Aboriginals in federal legislation.

"It's one in a litany of activities since the invasion and we're still continuing the kinds of things we did as the colonial invaders.

"This lack of citizenship, and the lack of legal recognition can be seen as a continuation of what was started in the invasion of Australia by the British."

Mr Lovett was in the room when Kevin Rudd issued his famous 'Sorry Speech'; the result of years of inquiry into the thousands of Indigenous Australian children taken from their homes.

He described the atmosphere as electric, with black, yellow and red as far as the eye could see.

"There were that many people in the end, he couldn't tell who was black and who was white," he said.

"There were some pretty tough fellas there and they were crying like babies."

Mr Lovett said he's tired of inaction from governments.

"They let us down again and we can't keep going through that scenario all the time," he said.

"We need action from governments federal, state and local."