An 'education in white brutality': Anthony Martin Fernando and Australian Aboriginal rights in transnational context

Abstract

This chapter investigates Anthony Martin Fernando's life of self-imposed exile and his overseas protests concerning the failure of British justice in Australia. From his early adulthood in the 1880s until his death in 1949, Fernando sought to bring international attention to Aboriginal rights. Fernando was first among the Aboriginal people personally engaged in this transnational critique of the Empire. Fernando explained, while working as a young railwayman he had witnessed the murder of an Aboriginal man and attempted to give evidence against the two white men accused of the crime. Fernando addressed British authorities through the American consul in Vienna. In his defence, Fernando benefited from the long-standing imperial trope of the civilised black man. Fernando's claims about white brutality could not have been more pertinent than in the sesquicentennial year of 1938.