Some of these same practices, vis-a-vis Aboriginal people, occurred in Canada, on an official basis at least until the 1970s. Native, Aboriginal children taken from their homes, sometimes physically snatched literally from their mothers’ arms, in order to learn how to be “civilized” and lose the more “savage” elements of their Native cultural upbringing. This movie is a true story of just three such kidnapped young girls, who escaped their captors by walking 2000kms home guided by a rabbit-proof fence, that runs the length of Western Australia, in order to return home.
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Three little girls. Snatched from their mothers’ arms. Spirited 1,500 miles away. Denied their very identity. Forced to adapt to a strange new world. They will attempt the impossible. A daring escape. A run from the authorities. An epic journey across an unforgiving landscape that will test their very will to survive. Their only resources, tenacity, determination, ingenuity and each other. Their one hope, find the rabbit-proof fence that might just guide them home. A true story. [From the Rabbit proof fence movie website].
"It is a remarkable story. A tale of three young Aboriginal girls, stolen from their remote homes during the 1930s under the [Australian] government’s program to assimilate blacks and whites, who escaped the authorities and walked 2000 kilometres home. Two of them made it back to their mothers by following the rabbit proof fence that runs the length of Western Australia.
The Rabbit Proof Fence is a true story, and one that highlights the most painful experiences of [Australia’s] stolen generation."
The colour of prejudice, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 February 2002
Shortly after the publication in 1997 of Bringing Them Home, the harrowing report into Aboriginal child removal policies and practices, the right-wing intelligentsia in Australia mounted a spoiling campaign. Its purpose was to show that the idea of the “stolen generations” that is to say the idea that between 1900 and 1970 very many thousands of Aboriginal children had been forcibly and unjustly removed from their mothers, families and communities was a myth.
According to this campaign many of the separated “half-caste” children sent to institutions had been “rescued” from tribal societies which rejected them. Other children, in non-tribal situations, had been taken from their families because of proven parental neglect. Far from being an expression of racism, the removal of Aborigines was well-intentioned, driven by sincere concern for the best interests of the child. The story of the stolen generations was, in short, a typical fabrication of the “black armband” school of history, a product of the alienated, un-Australian chattering class.
This week the first important feature film on the subject, Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence, was released nationwide. It tells the wonderful story of three “half-caste” girls from the Aboriginal settlement at Jigalong, in the West Australian north, who were seized by the police and transported to the Moore River Native Settlement, but who escaped and, while managing to evade a hunting party, walked 2400 kilometres to make it home.
Rabbit-Proof Fence is a great entertainment. But it is considerably more than that. In showing that the girls were seized from loving mothers, who suffered terrible grief; in showing that the agents of the removal were the police; and in showing that the architect of the removal policy was the Chief Protector of Aborigines, A.O. Neville, a man driven by the vision of a society cleansed of “half-castes” the film offers a clear interpretation of the early phase of child removal in Western Australia.
No episode in our history is more ideologically sensitive or of greater contemporary significance for indigenous/non-indigenous relations than the story of the stolen generations. As Rabbit-Proof Fence seems likely to have more influence on public understanding of this issue than any other cultural artefact, it is important for audiences to know whether or not the story is a representative one and whether or not the historical interpretation offered is, broadly speaking, true.At the centre of Rabbit-Proof Fence is the claim that in interwar WA “half-caste” children were seized by the state exclusively on the basis of “race”. This is a disturbing suggestion. But was it so?