In the Name of the Father and Civility: Walking about in the Australian Outback in The Rabbit-Proof Fence

Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence craftily treads the line between the dichotomy of benevolence and malevolence without being didactically simple or even pronouncing a full-blown indictment (White Colonial Man, Bad, Aborgines, Good). In 1931, Western Australia, the film traces one family’s true story affected by the official governmental policy. The policy, unofficially predating the 19 th Century but implemented between 1910-1971, of abducting ‘half-caste’ Aboriginal children into resident schools to use Canadian lingo. Half-caste seems like a dubious term picked up from India – having less to do with stratified classes but a Puritan, racist, eugenic scheme for bi-racialized children. In Apartheid South Africa, the term would be Coloureds. The film is based on a book by Doris Pilkington, the daughter of one of the three Aboriginal girls kidnapped from their matriarchal unit in Jigalong. The crux of the film is their post-escape survival in the Gibson Desert or more precisely, along the barbwire fence which divides the white farmer’s farmland from rabbits and other unruly wilderness (ahem, the ungodly). The fence is rather a number of fences that cuts through Australia from coast to coast. The children endure a 1,500 miles / 2000 Km trek. The only comfort is the knowledge that the two-month journey home is finally achieved – the journey itself is never tedious.

Molly Craig, the eldest at 14 years old, leads her sister Daisy and cousin Gracie (respectively aged 8 and 10) through the various landscapes of Western Australia. The girl’s stoic nature is highlighted as she outwits, outplays and outlasts the Tracker. The Aboriginal Tracker, working for the Whites, is to capture and send them back to Moose River Native Settlement School.

Outback smart, Molly (Evelyn Sampi) plans the escape immediately during the Settlement’s Sunday Service, making use of the camp’s window of opportunity, moments before rainfall can erase their footprints. She carries her sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury), the most endearing on-screen child “actor” in the tradition of Bruno in Bicycle Thief (1948) and the adorable Liam (2000), on piggyback since harsh walking has caused lesions on her legs. Molly takes on risks like grabbing socks from clotheslines. They encounter good white farmers, rugged as the terrain, offering food after chastising her for eating scraps of sullied bread from the chicken-pen. Just like Molly takes what she can instinctually, she knows whom not to trust. The film portrays a multitude of Aboriginals without descending into stereotyped mysticism. Among them, the three traitors: the Tracker, Trickster and at the lower level, the dormitory leader, a teen herself, who needs to discipline the boarders. “You’ll get used to it,” she cautions. Like Jewish Kapos in concentration camps, they, too, are victims of their circumstances.

The Tracker, equipped with whip in hand, literally tracks the footprints of the escapees. Though he is not the only aboriginal collaborating, since outside the school there is an Aboriginal camp full of adults, his reason may be more fundamentally human than ethical. His employment grants him access to his daughter, interned in the school unlike the many parents who would never see their children again. David Gulpilil plays the silent Tracker Moodoo echoing his role as the loin-clothed aboriginal teen in Brit Nicolas Roeg’s romantic, wild child savage epic, Walkabout (1971). This film about the coming-of-age rite, based on the book by James Vance Marshall, was classic school-reading fare and an obligatory post-read film viewing for the non-threatening follow-up discussion. The film was shown in schools and on television alike, functioned similarly as Anne Frank and Black Stallion. Most impressionable to a child’s eyes were the dunes, stark naked Other and above all, the mystical opal deposit scene. Natural resources were basically at root of Australia’s economic structure like most colonies.

On the contrary, in Rabbit-Proof Fence, the girls’ own Walkabout period was not one of frolic in the sun or a tribal rite of passage since it was imposed from without. The annihilation and physical removal of Aboriginals is documented elsewhere. This film isn’t about “The Stolen Generation” trials and abuse but grants us privy to all facets of the policy at the microcosmic level, the Craig Family.

Upon arrival after enduring a train-ride caged like animals, one frightened girl’s first glimpse of the gaunt nurse in uniform, exclaims, “GHOST!” Her point of view reveals such a figure even though the nurse sincerely appears concerned for the “poor things” only to wash and groom them, ”Now, that’s much better.” This ain’t no finishing school. The physical abuse for a failed escapee, found with scissors to cut herself an opening through the wire fence, sets as example to others for she is humiliated: beaten and shaved in an outhouse.

Another ex-alumnus of Moose River, harbours the girls on the run in a house where she has a servile position (since the education at the school is to isolate, assimilate, proselytize and hone future servants) begs them to stay for the night so she wouldn’t be raped by the gentleman farmer. This last-chance is the climax where the unrelenting Tracker intentionally slips. This might be a contestable conclusion because he looks back. The only reason the search is abandoned is purely bureaucratic since the equivalency of the Ministry of Highways measures its costs. Mr. Neville, the British-born official responsible for the search is as concerned with the loss of human life as saving face with the media.

Mr. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), whom Aboriginals refer to Mr. Devil, is the chief protector of Aboriginal Affairs headquartered in tame, far-away Perth. At the school’s assembly, the half-castes are summoned to meet Mr. Neville’s inspection. He inspects their skin underneath their clothes if they can “pass” as white since only light-skins are to receive a better education.

The film makes his character rather nebulous by displaying his best intentions in his slide show to Perth’s society ladies and benefactresses. The slide on three generations of Aboriginal half-castes “losing their blackness” further down is based not on protecting or safeguarding their aboriginal-ness/aboriginal blood as stipulated but rather Aboriginals navigating among “us” as Whites. The rationale behind the fear of miscegenation is that once mixed, White blood becomes ‘diluted’. His aseptic concern for the well being of the children, who must be safely conducted back to security under his watchful eye, is part of the arrogance. A.O. Neville knows much about aboriginals like a Sunday anthropologist. On the difficulty of finding Molly and her posse, he postulates, “Just because a society still uses Neolithic tools, does not mean it has a Neolithic mind.” A quote repeated over and over in my mind. This is from a man who historically claimed Whites could “breed out” Aboriginals. For more insight on the matter, refer to Kim Scott’s novel Benang: From the Heart.

Director Phillip Noyce’s Hollywood’s career (The Bone Collector, Clancy/Harrison Ford vehicles Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games) may be incongruous with his Australian productions. Just this year, his timely politicized film adaptation of Graham Greene’sThe Quiet American may take him back to legitimacy receiving a National Board of Review as best director for both films. Rabbit-Proof Fence received the AFI award for best film (that’s is the other AFI, Australia Film Institute, folks). Last year’s auspicious “Aussie invasion” of Hollywood better bear fruits. The whole lot of them, New Zealander and Oz-resident, the Order of Britannia-medal donning Russell Crowe and Lord of the Rings’ technicians ought to vote for the Australasian contenders in this year’s Oscars.

The worthy cinematography comes from Christopher Doyle, an Aussie whom gave us the crisp visions of Kar Wai Wong’s films. Capturing harsh and desolate landscapes is the alternate use of film stock and digital for the reflected glares which white-wash, blind and disorient the dizzy girls, used similarly in Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat: Fast Runner for the Idea of the Arctic North. The Idea of the Bush is central as a cultural metaphor in Aussie folkloric bush ballads, film and literature. Unfortunately, Golden Globes chose only to nominate the film’s soundtrack rather than the cinematography.

Peter Gabriel’s Real World score, Long Walk Home, compliments the journey unobtrusively. The didgeridoo-inspired, all-original soundtrack also has the aural reverberate hum associated with U2’s The Joshua Tree. Eclectic is the inclusion of the Gospel troupe The Blind Boys of Alabama who try their hand at tribal throat singing. It remains to the spirit of the Indigenous even if tinkered by a European World Beat aficionado.

The political ripples of a film like this have already caused uproar since the issues have boomerang back to the fore by Mainstream Australians. Years ago the world may have tapped to Peter Garrett’s Midnight Oil lyrics: (“The time has come. To say fair’s fair. To pay the rent. To pay our share. The time has come. A fact’s a fact. It belongs to them. Let’s give it back.” The image in the video of an obese, light-skinned Aboriginal motioning like a fish in running waters is significant). Prime Minister John Howard (member of the Liberal Party, the Conservative/Tory equivalent; at least Australia understands the economic origins of Liberalism) refuses to apologize we learn from the film’s credits. The film has offended Oz politicos at the suggestion of “What? Us, racist?” Culpability is one thing but admission or official apology means compensation. That would mean an economic strain on a system, which was designed by the economic forces of colonialism. But reconciliation and contrition is free.

The film has definitely touched a nerve such as “Rabbit-Proof Myths” article, featured in Melbourne’s Herald Sun. Penned by Andrew Bolt who seems like an apologist for Neville by out-lining the myths, “lies” and factual slights. For example, the real Molly took a ship and not a train. Bolt pays lip-service to the real-life Molly’s memory by re-iterating her official screening statement, “That’s not my story!” He denounces Noyce for “dividing” Australians and points out the usual not mea culpa litany: Whites have been rescuing aboriginals from abuse, neglect, licentiousness and “squalid bush camps” which conditions even surprised the daughter-author Doris Pilkington. He implies that theirs was not a moral family structure, who had “no father to protect them”, since they were fathered by roving whites. Bolt questions the film’s implication that “we had a genocidal past” and interprets the puppetry scene to Swanee River where the “Negro song” demonstrates the lost of their “blackness”. He finally attacks “so-called Stolen Generation activists’ claims ” since “parents voluntarily handed them over” etcetera …

Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) is a documentary by Darlene Johnson (also directed the documentary about this period, The Stolen Generation 2000). More a story of the casting of the film rather than the tired making-of, she films the search for the three girls to play the central characters from the 100-selection pool.

Like Neo-Realism, the child actors in the film were amateurs. (Rumour marketing mill says the girls had not seen a movie let alone acted before). The stylized acting seems awkward at first – the distraught granny cranium rock-hitting (a cultural expression of grief, we don’t know) and the final reunion where the girls smoothly collapsed in their respective embracing targets – the long-awaited welcoming arms of grandma and mother, who kept vigil.

Disconcerting are the Anglo-Saxon proper names and surnames in the film’s credits - part of the success behind assimilation prior to the government initiative accumulating as a ‘natural’ course of centuries of colonialism. Telling also, that the production had to hire a Wangatunga dialect coach.

It is not only Australia that bears the brunt of this ‘dark chapter of our history’.

Canada’s resident schools (also the removal of Native children from their homes into foster homes at a later stage - another thorn altogether) are socially acknowledged though addressing the taboo is similarly unpopular.

What do Australia and Canada have in common? Among many factors: An Anglo-Celtic mainstream (Canada’s mainly Scottish merchant class along with the obvious French-Canadian fact, as one of the ‘two founding nations’), preferential treatment in the British Empire (White on White Colonialism) and a reverence for British bland culinary customs, regalia and institutions. When you think Canadian, a white face (more often than not, typically named Doug as Douglas Coupland mentioned recently in Macleans) springs up from media images (respectively, tanned for bronzed Australians and pasty for sun-deprived Canadians). The tokenism bestowed onto First Nations and Multiculturalism comes in the form of postcard tourism imagery, the heralding of the aboriginal sprinter Cathy Freeman during the Sydney Olympics and political opportunism in terms of votes. The marked difference, of course, is Australia’s strive for Republicanism, which is barely at a nascent stage in Canada, and the obvious climate-dominated wilderness imagery since the two nations sit at extreme ends of the hot-cold binary poles.

Residents schools for the First Nations in Canada were constructed in almost every province and territory: from the Inuit North, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. These religious “missions”, as they are now known by their revisionist denominational order, mainly belonged to the Anglican, Catholic, United Church of Canada and Presbyterian Churches.

The latest form of proselytisizing of the Indigenous comes from the American-type evangelization of the Inuit in the North and as seen in Central America permits political passivity, cultural stripping and the doing away of Liberation Theology-type action. On CBC News Sunday television program, one missionary-in-training at Bible Camp, saved from the eventual alcoholism, admonishes her younger brother’s native upbringing, particularly his “pagan” folk dances to the Wolf and Wind divinities.

The abuses of French-Canadian children, termed the Duplessis’ Orphans, at Catholic institutions (orphans, illegitimate children or parents who temporarily abandoned their children due to poverty during the 30 year provincial regime of Maurice Duplessis) get more airplay and sympathy here in Quebec in light of collective compensation. Ireland’s religious orphanages ran for-profit laundries extracted labour from fallen girls, a practice which ceased in 1996, is depicted in Golden Lion winning Madgalen Sisters (Peter Mullan, 2002). No reparations as of yet.

Also, particular to both Australia and Canada, were the final destinations for the British War Orphans (whose impoverished parents were alive) with her Majesty’s nod. In Australia, ‘Missions’ forced these European-born Christian children into hard labour. Then, there is documentation on immigrant slave labour in both nations.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired a film a decade ago, where the kidnapping ploy was somewhat similar. The Inuit girl gets tricked into an aircraft in the 1950s and forced into a resident school. The National Library of Canada lists several National Film Board (NFB) films, amongst many first-person accounts, literature, and theses in its Native Residential Schools in Canada Bibliography. One film entitled Where the Spirit Lives(Bruce Pittman, 1989) deals with Depression-era Saskatchewan and the native girl’s newly appointed Christian name that is part of the trauma endured.

What if the Government kidnapped your daughter? This tag line captures the weekly sensationalism of last summer’s abduction season where the media fixated on America’s immediate and personal fears of family rupture. Yet, this story is just one story many want to ignore. But the arresting and evocative nature of Rabbit-Proof Fence will not leave spectators immovable. My male friend sat motionless in tears. The real-life sisters, in their fragile 80s, emerge in the digital appendage as strong and willful.

The true events outside the film’s concerns are not as happy as the eventual unification in the narrative. Molly will be captured once, married and escape via trek again. Her daughter Annabelle will be permanently taken. Her cousin Gracie would never return. Stone-faced Molly breaks down at last at the end of the film, interpreting futility and impotence as failure. At this point, one does not care for technical omissions. Nor do they matter.