Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) -
Tianna Sansbury
Rabbit-Proof
Fence (2002) A fourteen year-old Aborigine girl escapes with her sister
and cousin from a 1930s Australian government camp intended to forcibly
assimilate them into White society. [Dir: Phillip Noyce/ Everlyn Sampi,
Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan/ 94min/ Adventure-Drama/ Government as
Bigot, Government vs. Native Peoples]
One of the things that so often makes government cruel is physical
distance. The people who create law and the bureaucrats who interpret
it are in a faraway place, well-defended against troublesome protest
and remote enough not to see and feel its full effects. That's the only
way to understand the actions portrayed here of A.O. Neville, then
"Chief Protector of Aborigines" in 1930s Western Australia, who ordered
the roundup (i.e., kidnapping) of all half-caste girls (girls of half
Aboriginal and half White descent) from their Aboriginal families for
mandatory education into the ways of White society, leading to eventual
low-level employment as domestic servants.
Neville was simply enforcing the "Aborigines Act," a
law designed with the happy intention of "salvaging" half-caste girls
from Aboriginal life and integrating them to the degree possible into
the modern world. So far away, Neville likely did not see such girls
being ripped from their weeping mother's arms, or hear the unending
wail of a parent's loss, or see the huddled, terrified girls carried
away by train.
That is still
going on today in a quiet way, by helpful people in their white World
of religion or not ....... to help make a Poor Stupid Native more
white ..... just like them? Now who is the Poor and Stupid one?
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) - Tianna Sansbury
No comments:
Post a Comment