Rabbit Proof Fence By Phillip Noyce

Summary

Title: Rabbit Proof Fence
Composer: Phillip Noyce
Screen Play: Christine Olsen
Year: 2002
Text Type: Film
Genre: Adventure, Drama, History
Appropriation:
* Dorris Pilkington Garimara's book; Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence Audience: * Non-indigenous People * Possibly Internationally
Purpose:
* To inform responders of the injustices done to Aboriginal Australians * To persuade responders to empathise with victims of the stolen generations * To provide a historical commentary providing information for international interests * To allow a modern audience to empathise with the situation Aboriginal Australians were put in
Context:
* Based on a true story * Set in the year 1931 in Jigalong, a remote community in Western Australia
* Australia's Chief Protector of Aborigines (since 1915)- A.O.
Neville enacted controversial policy to remove aboriginal children from their families. * Policy stated: mixt race aboriginal children ("half-castes") were to be removed from their families and assimilated into predominantly white society. Neville saw this as a way of "saving" aboriginal people because new white settlements displaced large number of natives. * Film prompted by Bringing Them Home report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (time of Keating Government). Report found the policies constituted genocide within terms of Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). * Estimated 30,000 children removed from families between 1900 and late 1960's. * These tragic stories of the stolen generation were untold until recently
Synopsis: * Set in WA in 1930's, begins in remote town of Jigalong (northern part of RPF) * 3 children live with mother and grandmother. Molly (14) and Daisy (8) are sisters and their cousin Gracie (10). * "Protector" of Western Australian Aborigines, A.O. Neville orders "half-caste" children to be removed and put in institutions in order for them to be breed out of existence. * The children are forcibly taken from their family and culture in Jigalong and taken to a camp at the Moore River Settlement. * The girls escape and walk home to Jigalong along the RPF. Moodoo an aboriginal tracker is called in to find them but fails as the girls are well trained in distinguishing their tracks. * Gracie is recaptured after being told to catch a train to see her mother. The other girls, powerless to aid her continue on. Eventually they make it there and go into hiding in the desert with their mother and grandmother. * In the epilogue we see recent footage of Molly and Daisy. Molly explains Gracie has died and never returned to Jigalong. She also tells of her own two daughters and how they were taken to Moore River. She managed to escape with one daughter, Annabelle and walk home along the RPF once again. However, Annabelle was recaptured again. Molly and Daisy say that they "… are never going back to that place' in their closing. Relationship to concept/ Core Themes * Humans naturally seek community and belonging (girls were removed from this) * Belonging to culture * How the culture of a nation shapes ones identity * Aboriginal spirituality * Relationships with the land * Family bonds * Courage and determination