March 13, 2003

Plains Folk: Rabbit Proof Fence

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

If you’re lucky enough to have a theater showing it, take in the film from Western Australia, Rabbit Proof Fence. It not only will evoke for you the country of its origin but also will provoke you to think about our own story here on the plains of North America.

No, the film is not about rabbits, although Western Australia had them in abundance. Introduced from the old country, they multiplied to disastrous pest proportions so that in 1901-07 the government built a web-wire fence clear across the continent. I’ve seen it. It had to have been a heck of a job to bore the line of postholes and lay fence across all that country lacking in timber. But that’s not the story of the movie.

The story is of three Aboriginal girls who followed the fence to freedom. (Two made it, one was recaptured.) They had been taken from their mother, at Jigalong in the northern part of the state, and transported to the Moore River Native Settlement, just north of Perth, the capital. They were taken because they were half-caste, that is, mixed-blood, Aboriginal and White, and because state policy said they would be better off if raised by Whites.

All this took place in the early 1930s. The idea was to solve what was considered to be "the race problem." Whites considered Aborigines a dying race, and so time might take care of the problem. In the meantime, though, there were countless half-caste children to consider, children resulting from the unions of White workers in the bush and Aboriginal women. The Protector of the Aborigines (nice title) was supposed to take these children and place them in orphanages to learn trades. Many, the ones with lighter skins, also were adopted out to White families, never to be seen again by their true families. This went on right into the 1970s.

Other countries often point to the treatment of Aborigines in Australia as a horrible example of race relations, and certainly the kidnapping of what is known as the Lost Generation of Aboriginal children was a horror. As we view this film and consider the situation it treats, we have to remember what was done along similar lines in the United States and Canada. Both nations operated boarding schools for the express purpose of removing Indian children from their families and to make them into Whites, thereby solving the race problem.

The current film derives from a book of the same title by Doris Pilkington, daughter of Molly Craig, the young heroine. Molly and her sisters Daisy and Gracie ran away from the Moore River settlement, evaded trackers and police, and used the No. 1 Rabbit Proof Fence as their guide home to Jigalong. The journey is epic, in a humble sort of way.

Some 1,200 girls were interviewed for the three leads in the movie. The casting director, after evaluating 16 finalists in Broome, Western Australia, selected Everlyn Sampi, Laura Monaghan, and Caitlyn Lawford. Sampi, 13, from the Aboriginal community of Djarindjin, is the eldest. Her director, Phillip Noyce, says she has star quality, and unfortunately, he’s probably right. All three girls walk their parts with utter grace.

Noyce is an Australian who got tired of dealing with people in Hollywood like Harrison Ford, Danzel Washington, and Angelina Jolie (go figure) and came home to Australian to make a worthwhile film. It must have been a moving journey for him to retrace the fence across the country and meet Molly Craig and Daisy Kalibil in Jigalong.

The spirit of the girls is heartening, but don’t expect happy endings. The film will make you angry. Kenneth Branagh as Chief Protector of the Aborigines is perfectly officious, and sure of the rightness of his actions, and yet he does not seem quite evil. The banality of his performance is maddening. Maybe that’s how these things are done.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, isern@plainsfolk.com
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu 

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