27 octobre 2008
Rabbit Proof Fence
The Rabbit Proof Fence is protective device built in Australia during the last century to protect Australian pastures from the invasion of rodents. There are three fences in total, isolating Western Australia from the rest of the country.
Rabbit Proof Fence is the story of three little girls, Molly, Daisy and Gracie, who were stolen from their parents by British Authorities on humanitarian grounds, and sent away in the "care" of churches and religious missions, around 1930.
Thousands of children across Australia have been forcefully removed from their families during the 20th century, their names changes and their identities erased, in a bid to "dilute" the aboriginal population in the white, christian population of settlers.
Molly, Daisy and Gracie were sent to the Moore River Native Settlement, and escaped. They walked the 2500 km journey to their mothers.
Simple storyline. Three little girls, the Australian desert, a white male figure of authority and an aboriginal tracker.
However, it turns into quite something else. It talks about motherhood, and what bonds a mother to her child. It shows the strength of that bond, symbolized by the fence: the girls follow the fence to get home. The fence is what links them to their mother, but it is also what gives them away. A double-edged life-line.
it is also about culture and nurture, and the frivolous white/christian concept that all cultures are inferior to Western culture. Supposedly removed on humanitarian grounds (the excuse then used by the British was that Aboriginal people neglected their children), these children were banned from using their language, were sent to Church and westernized as much as possible. During their journey across Australia's bush country and desert, the three little girls become a plea for aboriginal culture, and their extra-ordinary knowledge of their environment. Three tiny girls face the immensity of the unforgiving desert, but they have with them thousands of years of Aboriginal skills. The movie asks the question of culture, and whether one is more valid than the other. It stresses the tight links between culture and environment. It demonstrates brilliantly that Aboriginal culture is in fine tune with the Australian harsh country, and shows by contrast how unskilled and helpless white people are when facing the desert: the girls elude their pursuers over and over again. Tracked by an Aboriginal working for the white man, the girls must resort to all their ingenuity and knowledge to avoid capture. The character of the "tracker" is also very important, as this man symbolizes all the horror of being a parent, Aboriginal and enslaved at the same time: the tracker has a daughter, held captive in the same facility as the girls. He is on probation (although it is never known what his crime was) and is forced to chase the fugitives and bring them back to the camp. The tracker has to choose between some rare and distant encounters with his captive daughter and freedom. He betrays his people to carry on being a father, despite the huge costs. This -almost mute- character seems to speak for the Aboriginals, and shows them as being no more, no less than human beings (a father makes a moral sacrifice in order to be near his child, just like any parent would do).
But this movie is first and foremost a cry for all these children taken from their families, all these mothers that never saw their children again, all these lives ruined and shattered by the all-powerful white man. Declared wards of the state (even though most of them still had their parents), the children were robbed from their identity, and, when later "released", the impact of the Government's policies eventually started to show: uprooted, and virtually coming from nowhere, the Aboriginal stolen generations encountered huge difficulties with life as second-class citizens, and crime and drug ravaged the communities.
The Australian Government apologized to the Aboriginal people in 2007, more than a century after the first children were removed from their families.
The systematic removal of children from their families, their forced westernization, and the planned "breeding" of Aboriginal people with westerners would have brought about the end of the Aboriginal people, had it been carried out completely.
This was a planned genocide. Nothing more, nothing less.
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