1 November 2008
Fernando's Ghost
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In 'Fernando's Ghost', we hear about the extraordinary international career of the Aboriginal rights activist Anthony Martin Fernando, who is slowly emerging from the shadows, 60 years after his death.
He was an Aboriginal man who pinned toy skeletons to his overcoat and picketed Australia House in London in the 1920s. He tried to petition the Pope and was accused of being a German spy.
Fernando was born in Sydney in 1864, the son of an Aboriginal mother, his 'guiding star' from whom he was separated as a child. He claimed to have been brought up in the home of a white family who denied him an education and treated him like a pet. He complained bitterly about the mission system, describing its settlements as 'murderhouses' -- instead proposing that an Aboriginal state be established in Australia's north, free from British and Australian interference, under the mandate of a neutral power.
Even though Fernando is relatively unknown, he has a mythology. This program explores the documentary evidence of his random but constant political activity -- from letters he wrote, to newspaper reports and secret communiques between British and Australian authorities.
As far as historians can ascertain, Fernando was driven into self-imposed exile in the early 1900s, after being excluded from giving evidence in the trial of white men accused of the murder of Aboriginal people. He believed the only way to secure justice for his people was to go to Europe. There he believed he might confront the British, whom he accused -- through the Australian Government -- of 'systematically exterminating' Indigenous people.
A religious man who could quote tracts of the Bible, he believed that God had entrusted him with a mission to save Aboriginal people from the colonial system that oppressed them.
'Fernando's Ghost' was first broadcast in July 2007. On Wednesday 29 October 2008 this program was highly commended by the judges of the inaugural John Newfong Media Prize, which has been established to recognise the contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to journalism in Australia.
Guests
Dr Fiona Paisley
Historian from the School of Arts, Media and culture, Griffith University, and biographer of Anthony Martin Fernando
John Maynard
Professor of history, Chair of Wollotuka, School of Aboriginal Studies, University of Newcastle, and grandson of Aboriginal activist Fred Maynard
Heather Goodall
Professor of history at the University of Technology Sydney, specialising in Indigenous political history
Linda Burney
Aboriginal rights activist and New South Wales government minister
Further Information
Publications
Title: An 'education in white brutality': Anthony Martin Fernando and Australian Aboriginal rights in transnational context
Author: Dr Fiona Paisley
Publisher: in Rethinking settler colonialism: history and memory in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, Manchester University Press, 2006
Presenter
Richard Buckham
Producer
Daniel Browning
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