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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2002

'Rabbit-Proof Fence'

This Australian film directed by Philip Noyce is set in Western Australia, 1931. Three young mixed-race Aborigine girls, Molly, Gracie and Daisy, (Everlyn Sampi, Laura Monaghan, Tianna Sansbury) are taken away by force from their people, the Jigalong mob, and transported 1,200 miles to a government camp at Moore River. Mr. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), Chief Protector of Aborigines, has legal powers to remove "half-caste" children from their Aborigine families.

The children are selected by skin color: lighter ones will be sent to regular schools; darker ones, like these three, will remain at the camp, where their language and culture will be suppressed as they are trained in the ways of white Australian capitalist society, and prepared for a future as domestic servants.

Molly, aged 14, is determined to escape, taking her younger sister and cousin with her. To reach home, they must trek across an immense expanse of outback, following the rabbit-proof fence that stretches right across Australia.

Neville is convinced that he is helping the girls by bringing them into the modern world, whether they like it or not. He believes that their Aboriginal traits can be "bred out" in three generations, so that they will be absorbed into white society, culturally and genetically. The idea that they should have a say in their own lives never enters his thinking. The Aborigines, who resist this social engineering, call him "Mr. Devil."

This is a real-life escape story, told in a film of sparse dialog and vast open landscapes. At the end, the real Molly and Daisy appear, and we learn that they did succeed in keeping their identity and culture. The policy under which they were taken away continued until 1970. The children who were taken away are known as the "lost generation."

--Richard Bunting

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