Ieesh M. Irving
TANTH 365/ Autumn 2014
Film Response

Watching Rabbit Proof Fence was not only enlightening but also appalling to have seen. I never heard of the atrocities that the aborigines experienced at the hands of the British government prior to this movie. The British government took oppression to another level. This was the story of how Molly, her sister Daisy, and cousin Gracie were stolen from their family and their dangerous expedition of returning home to their family. It features Mr. A.O. Neville, the Chief Protector of Aborigines, as the evil antagonist who believed that his mission was to protect the aborigines from themselves. This story told of some of the countless people that were part of “The Stolen Generation”, which are the children, which were labeled half-caste, that were taken from their Aborigine parent by the Australian government. This removal occurred between the early 1900’s up until the 1970’s. Not only did the Australian government The story begins in 1931 in west Australia. This is the time the Aborigines Act granted the government the authority to act as a legal guardian of every Aborigine in west Australia. This meant the government had control of who the Aborigines can meet or marry and where they work and lived. This gave Mr. Neville the power to remove half-caste children from their families. As a mother, I think that would be the cruelest thing you can do to a person; take their baby away from them. It would be easier to die rather than live life without my children. I was thinking while the women were struggling to keep their kids from being taken, that I would have been dead or in jail if some police officer did that to me. Mr. Neville saw Aborigines as inferior, primitive animals. He stole them, inspected them, groomed them and gave them away to become domesticated slaves to the white colonizers. He didn’t want a third race of mixed blood from Aborigine and European descent. He wanted to “breed out the Aboriginals.” He definitely elevated the height that evil can climb. Not only did he tear families apart, but he left generations wounded and scarred for life. I’m glad to know that the Australian government made a formal apology to the Aborigines for the heinous crime that were committed for such a long period of time.
The Moore River Native Settlement ran more like a children’s jail than a settlement. I’ve been in jail before for an extensive period of time. Just like the settlement, jail stripped you of your identity (from the way you smell, how you dressed, and how you’re addressed), you were on a strict and structured schedule, and they gave you food that you wouldn’t even feed your dog. I made wrong choices in life; but these half-caste children did not choose the life they were born to, they didn’t choose their ethnicity. The nursery in the film really made my heart heavy, when I see a child I always envision my little ones in their same predicament. There was no one to hold the babies and comfort them; their crib became their cage. I thought it was sad that Mr. Neville used other aborigines to hunt down and police their own people. I can’t imagine what type of mindset that Moodoo has, he’s a father who hunts down runaways and who has his own daughter living in the settlement. Living in the settlement, you were not only told when and what to do but it also brainwashed the children into wanting to adapt to the European lifestyle. At one point of the story Gracie tells Molly that she and Gracie didn’t want to go home and that they liked it there. But Molly was adamant about returning home and so the three set out on a 9-week journey. I felt the film also portrayed how prayer can be a powerful tool; and that there are spirits that come in many forms that can guide and protect you through life. The movie attributes the girls waking up in the dry desert and escaping death to the spirit bird. This movie also shows how the love of a child to their mother is incomparable to anything else.